Research has shown that beauty gives you an advantage in a variety of ways, but what if being considered unattractive wasn’t just a social hurdle but a criminal offense? From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, so-called “ugly laws” banned unsightly people from public places across the United States. Enacted to sweep marginalized groups out of sight, these discriminatory laws carried penalties of fines or imprisonment. The first law was passed in San Francisco in 1867, prohibiting any “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or deformed” person from exposing themselves to public view. It wasn’t long before cities like Chicago, New Orleans, Denver and Portland adopted similar “unsightly beggar” ordinances. Primarily aimed at beggars, panhandlers, and individuals with congenital or war-related physical differences, ugly laws reinforced the idea that bodily differences were “visual disturbances” that society should hide. The repeals of ugly laws followed the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act further stopped any possibility of a recreation of ugly laws.
