The beauty industry is a billion
dollar global industry for one simple reason: mankind is fascinated with beauty
and has always been. In virtually all societies in the world this fascination
with beauty manifests and has manifested itself in history in some form or the
other. In our times, thanks to the media and globalization, this obsession with
beauty has taken on gigantic proportions. In Venezuela, in the midst of the
economic crisis of the 1990’s, in which many industries shrank, it is on record that the Beauty industry actually
grew! Beauty is big business! These are some 6 things you ought to know about beauty
6
Beauty Has Economic Value
Throughout
history, and also in modern times, beauty has behaved liked an economic
commodity, complete with the demand and supply relationship (the less the
supply, the more the demand, and the more the ascribed value), and this applies
to both sexes. Today, as well, beauty seems to possess possesses economic
value. For instance, in his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without
Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell presents to us how a beauty characteristic, height,
has influenced the chances of men becoming CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Here
is an excerpt from the book (paraphrased):
“We assume that we deal with or think about tall people the same
way we deal with and think about short people. But there is a lot of proof suggesting
that height- especially in men - triggers an indisputable set of very favorable associations
we are not conscious of. I surveyed about half of the companies on the Fortune
500 list-the list of the largest corporations in the United States,and
discovered that overwhelmingly, the CEO’s of these businesses are, as I’m sure is
not too amazing to anyone, Caucasian men, which mirrors some kind of implied bias.
But they are also relatively tall: in my study, I found that on average, male
CEOs were just an inch less than six feet tall.
Given that the average American man is five foot nine, this
means that CEOs collectively have about three inches on the rest of their sex.
This information, however, actually downplays the matter. In the U.S.
population, about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet or taller. Among CEOs of
Fortune 500 companies, that figure is 58 percent. Even more arresting, in the broader
American populace, 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among
my CEO sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller.
The shortage of women and minorities among the top executive
ranks at least has an understandable reason. For years, for reasons having to do
with discrimination and cultural norms, not a lot of women and minorities
entered management ranks of American corporations. So, today, when boards of
directors search for people with the required experience to hold top positions,
there are not a lot of women and minorities to choose from. This explanation is
certainly not applicable to short people. It is feasible to staff a large
company entirely with Caucasian males, but it is not possible to staff a large
company without short people. There just are not enough tall people to go
around. Yet, few of those short people ever make it into top executive positions.
Of the much more numerous American men below five foot six, a grand total of ten
in my study have attained the level of CEO, which implies that being short is likely
as much of a handicap to corporate success as being a woman or an African
American. (The grand exception to all of these trends is Kenneth Chennault, the
CEO of American Express, who is both on the short side-five foot nine-and
black. He must be a remarkable man.)
Is this partiality deliberate? Of course not. No one ever says
dismissively of a possible CEO hopeful that he’s too short. This is quite
clearly a kind of unaware bias. Most of us, in ways that we are not totally
aware of, immediately associate leadership ability with an imposing bodily
stature. We have a picture of what a leader should to look like, and that
stereotype is so strong that when a person fits it, we simply are blinded to
other considerations. And this is not limited to the executive suite. Not long
ago, researchers who had tracked thousands of people from birth to adulthood ascertained
that when adjusted for such variables as age and gender and weight, an inch of
height is worth $789 a year in income. This means that someone who is six feet
tall but otherwise exactly alike to someone who is five foot five will earn on
average $5,525 more per year. As Timothy Judge, one of the authors of the
height-salary research study, points out: “If you take this over the duration
of a 30-year career and compound it, we’re talking about a tall person receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of earnings advantage.” Have you ever
reasoned why so many mediocre people find their way into the highest positions
of decision making in businesses and organizations? It’s because when it comes
to even the most important offices, our criteria for selection are a great deal
less rational than we suppose. We see a tall person and we swoon.”
Daniel Hammermesh, an economist
at the University of Texas, compiled research in his book Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More
Successful that proves that attractive people are wealthier and have
higher paying jobs than less attractive people. Attractive people earn an
average of 3 or 4% more than people with below average looks, which adds up to
a significant amount of money over a lifetime. Beautiful people are also hired
sooner and get promotions more quickly.
In a research conducted by Becker
in 1973, and another conducted by Bergstrom and Bagnoli in 1993, it was proven
that beautiful women marry wealthier and more successful men.
John Karl Scholz and Kamil
Sicinski of the University of Wisconsin concluded in their research that
attractiveness is an enduring labor market characteristic. Since their study
focused on men, that the correlation between attractiveness and earnings is not
driven by attractive men’s superior cognitive skills or health.
Research proves thatLight-skinned African Americans are more likely to
be employed than those darker skinned and are more likely to earn more wages. Restaurant owners hire
beautiful waiters because they know it has an influence
on their customers; companies give preference to attractive people when
hiring one-on-one sales
persons, because they know it influences their sales; firms give preference to
hiring attractive secretaries, because they know it influences the mood of
whoever walks in through the door. Most adverts on Italian sports newspapers
feature half-naked attractive women, regardless of the nature of the product
being advertised.
5
In Beauty,
Familiarity Breeds Indifference
No matter how beautiful a person
is, constant exposure to that person over extensive periods of timealmost
always certainly diminishes the initial awe felt on the first encounter.
This seems to apply to the female sex more than the male. Perhaps this is
because we come across more exceptionally
beautiful women than we do men so beautiful men are a rarity, and the female sex also has more options
when choosing to enhance their looks.In beauty, the general rule seems to be:familiarity breeds devaluation. However, the awe is to a large extent
maintained if in the presence of other appealing behavioral characteristics
such as words that reveal intelligence, and being bold and confident. The legendary Cleopatra was reasonably good-looking, but she
successfully seduced two emperors because of two other attributes in addition
to her looks:being unpredictable, and being fun.
4
Beauty is discounted when there
are many people considered equally or almost equally as beautiful in your
sexual category in the same environment.
In situations where
many good-looking people have to be in one environment, individual beauty is
discounted. In environments such as these, average looking people have an
almost equal chance of being considered attractive enough to be picked for a
date by the opposite sex, because of the abundance of good-looking people and
therefore the trivializing of good looks (demand and supply). For
instance, if a beautiful person is a member of a class in the university where
almost every other person of his or her sex is beautiful, his or her beauty
will almost certainly be undervalued. Also, in these situations, a trait that separates a good-looking person
from another usually makes them stand out. For instance, regardless of the fact
that recent research seems to suggest that men consider brunettes more ideal as
partners than blondes, if there are 25 good-looking brunettes and 3 equally good-looking
blondes men are to choose from in a place, the blondes will tend to stand out
and men may perceive them to be more attractive.
3
Beauty opens doors
into certain positions in society hard work and mental prowess by themselves
alone cannot attain.
Society
today is structured so that beauty occupies a certain
prominence in certain vocations. A career in modelling is a good example. Also,
beauty pageants are primarily set up to identify and select the most beautiful,
not necessarily the best character traits, arguably excluding the larger
majority of the human population.Beauty queens get to travel the world, and get
million dollars’ worth of endorsements, just to show their faces on products.
In many other professions whichdo not overtly require the asset of beauty to
perform, beauty still finds its way to influence people’s experiences on the
job, as already seen in some of the
examples given above.
In
his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell
presents to us the dramatic rise of Warren Harding in political life largely on
account of his beauty (paraphrased):
“In
1899, in the garden of the Globe Hotel in Richwood, Ohio, two men met while
having their shoes shined. One was a lawyer and lobbyist from the state capital
of Columbus. His name was Harry Daugherty, and he was brilliant. He was
considered the Machiavelli of Ohio politics, the quintessential behind-the
scenes fixer, an astute and remarkable judge of character or, at least,
political opportunity. The other man was a newspaper editor from the small town
of Marion, Ohio, who was at this point a week away from winning an election to become an Ohio state senator. His name was Warren Harding. Daugherty took a good
look at Harding and was immediately overwhelmed by what he saw. Harding was gorgeous.
He was at the time about 35 years old. His head, bodily features, shoulders and
torso had a size that attracted attention; their symmetry to each other made an
effect which in any male at any place would justify Harding being called
handsome. In later years, when he came to be known beyond his local world, the
word “Roman” was sometimes used in describing him. As he walked down from the
stand, his legs bore out the attention-grabbing and agreeable proportions of
his body; and his lightness on his feet, his erectness, his easy bearing, added
to the notion of physical grace and virility. Harding’s suppleness, in addition to his bigness of frame, and his large, wide-set rather glowing eyes,
heavy black hair, and recognizable bronze complexion gave him some of the handsomeness
of an Indian. His civility as he relinquished his seat to someone else hinted at
a genuine friendliness toward all mankind. Harding’s voice was noticeably resonant,
masculine, and warm. He had a consciousness about clothes unusual in a
small-town man. His attitude as he gave a tip suggested generous good-nature, a
wish to give pleasure, based on physical well being and genuine kindliness of
heart. In that instant, as Daugherty sized up Harding, an idea came to him that
would change American history: Wouldn’t that man make a great President?
Warren Harding was not a
particularly intelligent man. His best hobbies included playing poker and golf
and drinking and, most of all, to pursue women; in fact, his sexual appetites
were could be considered legendary. As he moved up the ranks from one political
office to another, not once did he distinguish himself. He was vague and ambivalent
on issues of policy. His speeches at one point were described as “an army of
pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.” After being
elected to the U.S. Senate in 1914, he did not attend the debates on women’s
suffrage and Prohibition-two of the most important political issues of his
time. He rose steadily from local Ohio politics only because he was pushed by
his wife, Florence, and stage-managed by the ever calculating Harry Daugherty
and because, as he grew older, he grew more and more irresistibly distinguished
looking. Once, at a feast, a supporter cried out, “Why, the son of a bitch
looks like a senator,” and so he did. By early middle age, his brawny black
eyebrows contrasted with his steel-gray hair to give the perception of force,
his massive shoulders and bronzed complexion gave the perception of health.
Harding could have put on a toga and climbed onstage in a production of Julius
Caesar. Daugherty prepared Harding to address the 1916 Republican presidential
convention because he knew that people only had to see Harding and hear that splendid
rumbling voice to be convinced of his worthiness for higher office. In 1920,
Daugherty persuaded Harding, against Harding’s better judgment, to run for the
White House. Daugherty was not being humorous. He was serious.
Daugherty, ever since he
and Harding had met, had carried in the back of his mind the notion that Harding
would make a great President, Sometimes, not realizing it, Daugherty expressed
this idea, with more fidelity to exactness, ‘a great-looking President’.
Harding entered the Republican convention that summer as the sixth of six other
contenders. Daugherty was not bothered. The convention was deadlocked between
the two leading candidates, so, Daugherty predicted, the delegates would have
to look elsewhere for an alternative. Who else would they turn to in that crunch
moment, if not to the man who radiated common sense and dignity and all that
was presidential? In the early morning hours, as they congregated in the
smoke-filled back rooms of the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, the Republican
Party leaders threw up their hands and asked if there was not a candidate they
could all agree on? And one name came instantly to mind: Harding! Didn’t he
look just like a presidential candidate? So Senator Warren Harding transitioned
to candidate Warren Harding, and later that fall, after a campaign conducted
from his front porch in Marion, Ohio, candidate Warren Harding became President
Warren Harding. Harding served two years before he died unexpectedly of a
stroke. He was, most historians agree, one of the worst presidents in American
history.”
Now, asides beauty, there
were other qualities of Warren Harding that contributed to his rise, such as the
sheer luck in meeting as shrewd a mind as Daugherty’s, and the times in which
America was: no television, so, voters had to make up their minds with the
little they saw of candidates and recommendations from others. Then Harding’s
disposition as well had made him likable to people generally, and enough to be
considered for the office of President. But we cannot deny that his beauty was
a force, the underlying currency that propelled him as well into that office.
2
Beauty is automatically associated with
intelligence.
How attractive a person is could
be a rough but fairly accurate assessment of a person’s genetic fitness. There
are studies
that attempt to show that beauty is also a good predictor of intelligence.
However, not all beautiful people are intelligent and not all intelligent
people are beautiful, but the automatic assumption is that beautiful people are
more intelligent.
1
Beautiful people are treated more leniently
than non-beautiful people in courts of law
I think this is the most infuriating aspect of beauty of all, but yes, research proves that beautiful people are treated more leniently in
similar cases with less attractive people. However, one research points out that if the
crime committed involves the beautiful person using their beauty to in any way
commit the crime, the verdicts of that crime is almost always more severe than
usual.
enjoyed what you read? Follow me on twitter @thejphronesis
Like my Facebook page 
No comments:
Post a Comment