In this SF story the question is : should one fight prejudice for beautiful people and against ugly ones artificially or just through education?

Question

I am trying to put some order in my memories of a middle-length fiction (novelette to novella) I read about 10 to 15 years ago in a collection.

It is presented as a succession of interviews with scientists, on the one hand, and with various "lay" people, mostly young ones, on the other hand.

The former explain that prejudice for beautiful people, and against ugly ones, is deeply "wired" into neural circuits in our brains by many thousands of years of evolution because beauty vs ugliness correspond to physical traits that were supposed to be associated with healthy offspring and/or giving offspring better care. Further, this is totally obsolete in our modern society (and even more, in the future society of the time where the story is set), but just a few centuries of evolution since the Industrial Revolution, say, are not enough to eliminate these inbred circuits, hence the prejudice. Third, that there is now a treatment for the brain (implants ? chemicals ?) to eliminate these neural circuits (or at least, inhibit them) artificially.

The interviews with "lay" people deal with an ethical question. All agree that this prejudice must be fought against. But some approve of this treatment as the perfect solution, while others consider that one should not use artificial means, but that all prejudices, based on skin colour, religion, weight, age, and so on, as well as beauty vs ugliness, must be fought against through education, not by a medical "trick".

IIRC, all these interviews are randomly arranged, and no conclusion is attained on the ethical question.

Answer 1

This is Liking What You See: A Documentary by Ted Chiang.

The novelette examines the cultural effects of a noninvasive medical procedure that induces a visual agnosia toward physical beauty. The story is told as a series of interviews about a reversible procedure called calliagnosia, which eliminates a person's ability to perceive physical beauty. The story's central character is Tamera Lyons, a first-year student who grew up with calliagnosia but wants to experience life without it.