THE NAABP: A MANIFESTO

    Dear Ms. Lorenzana,

I couldn't help but notice all the media stories about your plight over the past few days, and I felt I had to write to you to let you know that you are not alone.

I've read all the accounts of your firing from Citibank in New York  due to your excessive sexiness, attractiveness, and just-plain-insane hotness, and I am outraged. Read the Toronto Star account here. http://origin-www.thestar.topscms.com/news/world/article/819400--citibank-worker-says-good-looks-got-her-fired. Watch the Fox News story here: http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/offbeat/woman-claims-she-was-fired-for-being-too-good-looking-060310

 I, Emmett Shane, head an organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Beautiful People. I founded it because, for far too long, attractive people have been oppressed in this society.

Ms. Lorenzana, very few socially acceptable prejudices remain in the western world. (You have probably experienced many of the unacceptable ones due to your Puerto Rican accent, which I find delightfully breathy, by the way). But if there's one identifiable group left that is the target of open bigotry, surely it is people like you and me.

After all, we are virtually shut out of every high-paying profession except politics, cinema, theatre, high finance, fashion, corporate law, criminal law, medicine, professional sports, the sciences, music, and last but not least, television journalism.

     Never mind that the latest research suggests that good-looking people and tall people get a “beauty premium” — an extra 5 percent an hour — while there is a “plainness penalty” of 9 percent in wages. These figures, surely, are skewed and perhaps even the result of a conspiracy of unattractive social scientists.

I even read somewhere recently that intelligence organizations like the CIA and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service(C-SIS)won't hire us as spies because we "are too conspicuous and attract too much attention when undercover." Why, this is nothing but the most vile looksism dressed up as pious concern for national security, and I say we must put a stop to it now.

Now, along about now, many people who know me will wonder what business I have founding an organization like this. After all, they will say, I am a man of at-best average physical charms. Well, Ms. Lorenzana, they say this because they have never seen me in shorts.  

  Here's is a a fact from my past that they don't know. Years ago, I was fired as a shipper-receiver at a Toronto musical supply company for wearing shorts to work. My employers told me that my extremely well-developed, excessively well-proportioned calves were much too distracting for my female and gay male co-workers. They told me I must start wearing long pants forthwith.

  In fact, I remember when I was in the office writing out waybills at my desk, they would often crowd around trying to get a glimpse of my calf muscles. And I could see them pressing their noses against the window when I was in the back loading the cube van.

But Ms. Lorenzana, you have to realize Toronto summers are oppressively hot and humid and doing this kind of heavy physical labour in long pants is impossible. I disobeyed their edict, and was fired for it.

 Never mind that on a call to the home recording studio of Canadian jazz legend Oscar Peterson, I accidentally dropped his beloved Korg organ and damaged it beyond repair. Although that was the stated reason for my dismissal, I am sure it was the shorts. And to this day, I never wear them.

 Ms. Lorenzana, I would very much like you to become the face of the NAABP. I believe you could advance our cause in ways I can't even imagine. In fact, next time you're in Toronto, I'd love to meet you to talk all this over. I know a lovely tapas bar where we could meet, preferably when my wife is out of town.

  Warmest regards,

  Emmett Shane/NAABP President

   P.S., I'll even break my longstanding rule and wear shorts to our meeting to show you what I'm talking about.

  

Comments

[John Keating]

It's about time somebody stood up for people like Ms. Lorenzana and me. We have suffered long enough. God bless you, Mr. Shane!