Kauffman attended Idol with a group of friends on April 7. The friends arrived early to get good seats, but a woman staffmember told her, "You're just too big, too heavy to be in front."

"I was kind of taken back because the look on her face was just as if I was disgusting," Kauffman told Good Morning America."Honestly I didn't think I was disgusting looking."

Offended, the 19-year-old California college student went to the media. But what Kauffman and the general public don't know is that audience coordinators frequently serve as the pretty police -- patroliing audiences for the plain and chubby.

Directors in control rooms routinely scan crowds looking for the eye candy. During postproduction editing, audience pretties are often edited in to replace the shots of the schlubby.

Planning to attend a TV show taped before a live audience? Take note where the chubby and old are parked; odds are they'll be at the back of the audience.

How do I know? I worked at a TV show where the beauty bias was so prevalent that the show's top producer kept a "Pretty Police" baseball cap unapologetically displayed in her office for years.

It wasn't my job to seat audience members but I knew that youth and beauty often factored in where guests were seated. But once I did have to tell a woman who had had an operation on her skull not to turn her shorn head toward the camera; seeing a half-bald head would confuse the at-home audience.

There is no Constitution protection for the fat, and even if there were, the courts would likely find that being kicked back a few rows on a TV show damages nothing but ego.

But that doesn't make the truth about TV any less ugly.