"Lookism"

A recent MSNBC article focused on "lookism", the common propensity for people to prefer attractive people over unattractive people and their tendency to believe that attractive people have superior qualities.

One research project gave teachers extensive student files to review.
These files contained student grades, work habits and attitudinal
information as well as a “student photo.” As it turns out, teachers can
be just as tuned in to “looksism” as are the children’s peers.
Physically cute boys and girls were assumed to be more intelligent and
able to get along better with peers than were plain or less attractive
kids. This held true even though the grades and attitudinal information
in the files of the less attractive children were exactly the same as
the more physically attractive students! (More)

Certainly it is good to teach kids that this sort of thinking is a problem in that the assumption is often wrong, but one must wonder if it is entirely cultural in nature. It is clear that people prefer to associate with people that they find attractive and that what is attractive follows some general rules across cultures (symmetrical, proportional, etc). Is trying to teach children not to assume that the fat kid is slow and dumb as silly as trying to teach them that they should prefer to watch ugly people on TV?