“It’s not about the looks, but the personality that counts” is a well-known phrase that may just be another empty saying. It is almost certainly a myth. In fact, good looks have been the jackpot of the gene lottery for centuries. According to Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas in Austin, this jackpot is worth about 230,000 more dollars earned in a lifetime than a person with substandard looks.
But why are attractive people in such high demand? In most cases, people prepossessing good looks are viewed as smarter, more extroverted, more successful, and mentally healthier. Because of this assumption, in companies such as advertising where others’ views may be affected by actors or actresses, it has become almost essential to have an appealing face to advertise their product.
As Cayla Cwerner ’17 states that unlike in schools, “jobs don’t necessarily always have specific rubrics in which the interviewee can see where they went wrong, and nowadays it seems like many companies with a lot of people-to-people interaction want a face that gives them a positive public view. And if this means that a dumber but a more attractive person gives them a better public view, then so be it.”
Now before anyone starts criticizing society for being so shallow, here’s a question: is it something we can help? The answer is: not really. According to a Ted Talk from famous underwear model Cameron Russell, “We have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we’re biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures and femininity and white skin. In 2007, a very inspired NYU PhD student counted all the models on the runway, every single one that was hired, and of the 677 models that were hired, only 27 or less than 4% were non-white.”
Anina Ku ’18 reaffirms this by stating that “we, as in the American modern day culture, consider physical attributes seriously. I think that recently, people are trying to break away from that, but the truth is that our physical idea of attractiveness will remain influenced by the heavy media, which combined with our biological programming, makes it inevitable to be drawn towards people with appealing physical characteristics.” In other words, one shouldn’t get too discouraged about one’s disadvantage due to beauty (or lack thereof); everyone has an inevitable biological pull towards prepossessing people that they can’t help but react towards.
So does this mean you should drop out of Princeton and invest in high cheekbones? Probably not. And it doesn’t mean that you’ll get into any job just because of looks, either. Yet, it is still important to accept the ugly reality that although grades and knowledge are crucial to one’s career path, beauty may also have a lot of, if not more, influence on whether we work at all.