Beauty can buy a lot!

So Ruth Kamande, who is in Langata Women’s Prison for allegedly fatally stabbing her boyfriend 22 times trended recently on social media after winning a beauty pageant. Why are these stabbing sprees always twenty-something times, some scientist tell us please?

Some people were happy for her. Others were furious that a ‘murderess’ has become a celebrity. Allow me to take a stab at the question (ooops, I didn’t just say that)!

Let us agree that Ruth is somewhat good looking – starting with those well-calved legs, a figure, that brown skin, the gap in the teeth and those eyes that speak of all kinds of crazy. As far as femme fatales go, though, Miss Kamande is the real deal.

Now, let us move on to the real crux and cleavage of this article. Beauty gets you a pass in many matters, while ‘ugly’ often gets an undeserved 'ciao ciao'. Goodbye, ugly, and good luck. The more aesthetically challenged will need all the luck in the world. Let us begin with the most obvious advantage of having the gift, and curse, of beauty (and Ayi Kwei Armah can rest easy because the beautiful ones have been born).

Beautiful people have a wider range of dating options, and more so in this age of social media where pictures can be checked out on Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, unlike the old days when folks got blind dates from the behinds of newspapers, and someone described themselves in glowing terms – only for the person who walked in through the restaurant doors to resemble a dead cat dragged in by a lost warthog.

That means, eventually, their genetics are likely to lead to children who are really good looking. But because Jehovah God is still in heaven, and is a Fair Rod, he often makes sure very handsome men also don’t make a lot of money in order to balance out and distribute the good look genes. That is why ho-hum looking rich men, with their pretty wives, will still have those obese kids running around in Karen.

Speaking of which, all other things and qualifications being equal – and I don’t want to revisit the ‘sponsor’ topic here, that is last week’s wrapper – interviewers will tend to give the nod to the better looking candidate than to the ‘uglier’ individual.

This is because people like to surround themselves with the good things in life, and by ‘good’ we mean beautiful. You prefer a Beamer in the yard over a Probox, flowers over potted cactus plants, and no college student ever threw a party and said ‘invite all the ong’ong’os.’

That is why we have the phrase the great, the good and the Beautiful. It then follows, as a 2011 Cornell University study done over four years found, that good looking defendants are more likely to get a lighter sentence (by an average of 22 months, a lifetime in prison); and ugly defendants face the full blunt brutal brunt of the Law.

I know some people think Ruth ought to get 22 years in prison, but if I were her magistrate, I’d give her three years and three months in prison, followed by two years inside Mathare for mental evaluation. Then release her just in time for Christmas, and the New Year of 2022. She seems remorseful.

Some say she’s beautiful. So should Miss Kamande be punished for that by being banned from pageants, study programs and church services in Langata Prison, and instead be locked up in a dungeon, being fed on water and kamande full of weevils? It is prison, punishment already. It isn’t the Gulag archipelago.