I was watching this report today that dealt with people who felt strongly that beauty/appearances in life play a huge role in making more money as well as opening up opportunities. Essentially, all these people were debating about spending money for some form of plastic surgery as in their opinion people will treat them differently and it is a smart investment to enable them to earn more in life. Just as a note it was from a women’s perspective in the report. I suppose for men this is almost like the old height debate about the taller people earning more.
Of course, they went through one of those typical tests where they made a women look very “beautiful†and then very “ugly†to see the type of reactions she would get in various scenarios. One example was trying to sell a product and then survey people on her customer service skills. Sure enough, even for simple tasks it appeared that everyone was praising her very highly and more people, men and women, took the time to stop and hear her pitch. Whereas in the “ugly†form people ignored her mostly and for the ones that did stop ranked her just so-so even though she was virtually the same performance wise.
There was even one person who wasn’t getting any promotion offers at her job and soon after when she got a cosmetic surgery she was offered quite a few different positions that were of course more pay. Coincidence or reality?
I thought the timing of this report was kind of interesting too for me personally since I volunteered to talk about a subject that revolved around a similar issue not too long ago. In my personal opinion, while it is not necessarily a good thing, you can’t deny the fact that people are generally superficial about things like these when it comes to one’s appearance and the type of treatment you will receive.
Online is no different to a certain extent I’d say. Example, people exploit this fact all the time such as guys that create fake female aliases and using model photos to attract a crowd faster when it comes to getting attention. It usually works all the time too. So that raises the question, if your main point in working at say a job or perusing a venture was to maximize your income and opportunities through every legitimate means, is beauty one of those factors too where it makes sense to invest some good dollars on?
Generally speaking, I would say most people just associate “beauty†as a quick way to pre-judge if the person is healthy and a good positive person to be around. Very similar to when you pre-judge a company based on its office cleanliness and size. Just one of the many real things that you have to address when it comes to business. I guess you can say, it’s not pretty.