The mayor of Mount Isa — an isolated town in Queensland, Australia — was vilified for making the following statement:
“May I suggest that if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa.”
He is simply recognizing that in the dating/marriage markets, looks are one of the commodities traded; there is substantial evidence suggesting that uglier women marry men with less human capital — men who earn less.
Asking ugly women to come to Mount Isa is just the mayor’s attempt to get them to where their scarcity might allow them to mitigate their “disadvantage” and benefit from the surplus of single men. Gains from trade make sense to this economist, although the mayor’s statement is somewhat crude.
Interestingly, the head of Mount Isa’s Chamber of Commerce noted that, “There’s a lot of anger circulating among the community. … There [are] a lot of women voicing their opinions.”
I wonder whether the women’s anger is a reaction to the mayor’s crudeness or a standard response by monopolists who are threatened with competition.
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or maybe a little denial and the fact the truth hurts. That’s what this pc world gets you.
I heard a similar story on NPR just recently (might have been the same one) where one of the local women commented that “As we say around here, yes, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.” This comment might explain the demand-supply imbalance.
Brett Ellingson is right. This is a VERY funny post.
Thank you, Prof. Hamermesh.
Yeah, well, the men of Mount Isla aren’t interested. They’re disgusted at the notion that simply because there are more of them that they’d have to settle for less-than-attractive women.
Or maybe the women are upset at being treated like a commodity? Gee, I wonder why THAT would be offensive. Frame this all as “every man deserves to have a woman” and the economic angle makes sense. Talk about humans and human nature, and it’s de-humanizing women to refer to them this way. Economists do this frequently; you can’t really separate out the part where you’re talking about PEOPLE.
May I suggest that us pretty, single women in our 30′s, who are ready to settle down, but can’t find an American man to save our lives migrate to Mount Isa?
#12, it is not dehumanizing to discuss the attractiveness of others. It is an inherently human thing to do. People evaluate each other. Women usually value social status in men. That is why wealthy or powerful men have an easy time finding them. Men value appearance. There is no commodification in that. This is a false theory.
Male analysis of female attractiveness is identical to female analysis of of male attractiveness. Women’s obsession with male employment or university affiliation is no different than men’s obsession with waist and cup size.
It amazes me when I see a woman turn ill when hearing of a friend or collegue dating a waitress, but the same woman will later complain about male views of attractiveness. This is simply the way humans behave. Women denying their own obsession with class-enahncing mates does not make it false.
I think people are way too touchy about everything. It’s a long standing joke among grad students about how women in hard sciences and engineering and men in social sciences and humanities have a demand much higher than is warranted by their appearance/personality. And of course I’ve heard both sides comment on how the odds are good, but the goods are odd.
I don’t find anything inherently wrong in being spoken about as a commodity. Doesn’t the business world talk about human capital? Don’t HR firms talk about personnel count? Don’t we all choose careers based on demand and supply? Aren’t we looking at ourselves more as a commodity in those cases?
Hell, I remember joking with my friends about how my chances of finding a date increase exponentially if I took the ball-room dancing course although I’m not a good-looking guy (80-90% of those classes are women). All I can say about this entire issue is “Finally, a politician who understands probability!”
Women are exposed to tens of thousands of promotional images reminding us how “beauty-disadvantaged” we are. IF I were a Mt. Isa tax-paying voter, I’d tell the mayor (and respondents # 2-6 and 9) to turn off the porn sites and try to meet some real women.