Learn English – Term to represent “prejudice against ugly people” or “favouritism towards beautiful people”

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So, I have been noticing (disturbingly of late) that there is a lot of favouritism being shown towards beautiful people in all walks of life. One of the most visible of such fields is all forms of advertising where we rarely see ugly people being hired for promoting a product or a service unless of course, they are the target audience.

Is there a term to denote such prejudice against ugly people or favouritism towards beautiful people much like "racism" has come to denote "prejudice directed against someone of a different race"?

I have Googled a lot of phrases which can denote such a phenomenon, but haven't been able to find an appropriate term to represent it, much less know if it exists at all.

Best Answer

Lookism is often used to describe appearance-based discrimination:

Lookism is a term used to refer to the positive stereotypes, prejudice, and preferential treatment given to physically attractive people, or more generally to people whose appearance matches cultural preferences. The pejorative term body fascism is also used as a synonym and Warren Farrell has proposed the term genetic celebrity to describe adoration of the attractive.

I've also seen the term beauty bias bandied about every now and then in discussions about the physical attractiveness stereotype, "a term that psychologists use to refer to the tendency to assume that people who are physically attractive also possess other socially desirable personality traits". In other words, being beautiful can also be a disadvantage (which is the exact opposite of your contention).

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