Regulations in the United States did not allow, as they defined it, “sick, mutilated, ugly, or hideously deformed” persons to appear in public.
These “ugly laws” were as real as the American Civil War, and in fact, the war had just begun when it was knocking on the country’s door. As if everything was normal at that time, they were in trouble with people who were described as ugly.
The reason that the lawmakers took shelter behind was to end begging.
It wasn’t just pimples or minor imperfections. It included strict definitions of ugliness, including social class and economic status, as well as targeting people who did not conform to society’s norms of beauty.
In 1867, one of the first statutes of ugly law was passed in San Francisco. According to them, the purpose is; It was to outlaw street begging and prevent some people from appearing on the streets and in public places.
If you contained the described ugliness and went out into the street, you could face a fine.
The ugly law; according to their definition, any person “who became ill, injured or in any way ugly or disgustingly deformed” was fined for appearing in public. These laws specifically targeted the poor and disabled.
Exceptions to public appearances were acceptable only when the disabled became a kind of spectacle to demonstrate their separation from other people and their need for improvement.
His outrageous laws were well received by the public.
An article in the Chicago Tribune, one of the newspapers of the time, described removing ugly beggars from the streets as a public good. Everyone but the “ugly” seemed content with their lives.
No one was interested in the conditions that forced them to beg on the street, only other rights of those people were taken away. As long as they weren’t around, it was as if everything was perfect.
The invisible side of the law kept the gap between the rich and the poor growing wider.
This included job bans as well as social discrimination against various physically deformed groups of people. It seemed that the law was not a comprehensive law against the so-called ugly, but only against those who could not support themselves financially.
This sweeping of economically backward disabled people became the most dangerous infrastructure of these decrees. Thus, the gap between the rich and the poor, accepted and not, began to deepen. While contemporary artists had a place in society, the unemployed were pushed even further.
After the war, many people returned in appearances described as “ugly”.
At the end of the First World War, sensitivities began to be triggered. soldiers; As people came back deaf, blind, or missing a limb, people began to accept the disabled.
In 1974, the law was repealed, and in 1975 these laws were called “ugly laws” because of both their subject matter and their dire effects. Over time, people with disabilities were gradually offered more opportunities, and the “Americans with Disabilities Act” was passed in 1990.
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