Mother's Day Revenge of the Uglies
by Maggie Van Ostrand
"Parents would probably deny it, but Canadian researchers have made a startling assertion: Parents take better care of pretty children than they do ugly ones," stated the New York Times.
In their article entitled, "Sure, mom loves that ugly mug, but pretty baby gets better care," Times writer Nicholas Bacalar reports that a study by the University of Alberta concluded parents treat their children differently at the supermarket based on the kids' physical attractiveness.
These findings, as yet unpublished, were based on 400 parent-child observations in 14 supermarkets, and presented at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton.
It's not bad enough that the parents actually rated the looks of their children on a scale of one to ten, but admitted that their behaviour differed greatly between the kids they deemed unattractive and those they thought good looking.
Among the parental crimes committed against their not-so-hot-looking offspring, as noted in the University's study are:
• Grocery cart seat belts are dispensed with if the kid is ugly, but cute kids are protected by being belted in.
• Ugly kids are allowed to stand up in grocery carts, but the cute kids, carefully belted in, are not.
• Ugly kids can wander away and be out of their parents' sight, but the pretty kids are watched closely and may not travel further than a maximum of ten feet from mommy or daddy.
• Good-looking kids are much better supervised than homely ones, who are rarely prevented from engaging in potentially dangerous activities.
• Mothers strapped in a mere 4 per cent of the ugly kids, while13.3 per cent of the best looking were protected by a strap.
• When the father was in charge, not one of the ugly kids was belted in safely while 12.5 per cent of the good-looking kids were.
Do those parents think these "ugly" kids aren't going to grow up one day and get even? Aside from plastic surgery and orthodontics to change from physically unacceptable to acceptable, there's one failsafe way to the sweet smell of revenge -- Mother's Day.
I never got a single present for my mom that she liked. I steeled myself against her annual heavy sigh and rolled eyes when she opened her Mother's Day gift and invariably said, "Oh. Nice. But when did you think I'd ever use this?"
So here's a Mother's Day Revenge list of gifts for all you readers who were left alone to stand up in your mom's grocery cart:
A book she's already read
Garbage can
Pair of red socks
Toilet bowl scrub set
Box of macaroni
Vacuum cleaner bags
Twin quilt for her king bed
Dead flowers
Subscription to Sports Illustrated
Thigh Master
Gift certificate for psychiatrist's appointment
Take heart, all is not lost for ugly kids. Cameron Diaz, who has suffered from acne since high school still sports telltale pockmarks which can easily be seen as magnified by High-Definition TV. Perhaps her mom left her in the shopping cart, but who's got the last laugh now? Diaz is the highest-paid actress in Hollywood.
Even better than plastic surgery for camouflaging homeliness is achieving great wealth. Look at Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Sumner Redstone. Nobody can see what they look like through the dark glass of their limos.
On the other hand, you can be butt ugly and filthy rich like oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. All he got after living 90 years was a heart attack after he married Anna Nicole Smith.
Take care, Mommy, because the next kid you decide is ugly might grow up to write about it.
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