if it seems tHat attractive people
have everything handed to them or move
up the career ladder faster—with raises,
promotions or increased praise—there
may be some truth to that. In 2018, the
website RateMyProfessors.com, which al-
lows college students to review their pro-
fessors, dropped its “chili pepper” rating
following social-media backlash contend-
ing that it objectified professors, women
in particular. Interpreted as a “hotness”
scale, which helped give more-attractive
professors higher overall ratings, the chili
pepper was a prime example of the corre-
lation between beauty and success.
But do looks equate to success? Poten-
tially. From professors to CEOs to politi-
cians, no career path is exempt from the
idea that perceived attractiveness could
influence one’s success in the workplace
compared to subjectively “less attractive”
co-workers. In his book Beauty Pays, Dan-
iel Hamermesh, an economist and dis-
tinguished scholar at Barnard College,
has evaluated how looks influence pay,
raises and expectations in the U.S. work-
place. For example, Hamermesh’s research
states that workers who are perceived to be
good-looking earn an average of 5% more
per year than the average-looking person,
while employees considered unattractive
can miss out on up to almost 9%.
The
Beauty
Part
It’s not fair, but perceived
physical attractiveness does
seem to boost one’s chances
of getting ahead
By Emily Joshu
This beauty-based ideology can even
be narrowed down to specific physical
characteristics. For example, a University
of Florida study concluded that for every
additional inch of height, a tall employee
can earn $789 extra per year. If you exer-
cise regularly, you could earn 9% more on
average than workers who don’t make it
to the gym, according to a recent report
in the Journal of Labor Research. Even
blondes may have more fun, economi-
cally speaking, in that a 2010 study from
the Queensland University of Technology
in Australia found that of 13,000 Cauca-
sian women, the blondes earned at least
7% more than non-blondes.
But why does success seem to favor
head-turners over more ordinary coun-
terparts? Centuries ago, it was a common
belief that good-looking people were more
reproductively fit, which made them in-
nately healthier. “That’s not true any-
more; ugly people are just as healthy as
good-looking people, but we still have in
our minds that somehow good looks are
beneficial and therefore we’re attracted to
them,” Hamermesh says. Economists have
also theorized that beautiful people appear
more self-confident than their homelier
counterparts, which could appeal more to
employers and colleagues alike.
Gender may also play a role in how looks
influence success. Beauty Pays points out
that a man considered “handsome” could
make up to 13% more over his career than
his less attractive co-worker. According
to Hamermesh, the effects of this beauty-
first mindset might be more detrimental
for men than for women in a society that
expects more men than women to occupy
the workplace. Women, he says, are more
likely to opt out of working than men, so
they are less likely to feel the negative ef-
fects of their appearance.
Women are far from immune, how-
ever. A recent report from George Wash-
ington University found that in terms of
THE SUCCESSFUL ATTITUDE
