America had laws banning ugly people from public until 1974

Two Grotesque Heads. Anonymous, Netherlandish, 17th century. Met Museum.

From 1867 to 1974, cities across America enforced what are now called “ugly laws” — ordinances that made it illegal for anyone “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object” to appear in public. Chicago’s 1881 version carried a $…