Yes, that is a thing. In today’s world, superficial looks can have a great impact on your personal-life, career, and your overall income. The argument might seem absurd, but look around you, beauty is used as a marketing tool to reach a specific type of audience. Aside from modeling, beauty could have a great effect on you landing this 9 to 5 or even landing this one-time gig. This could be accredited to today’s western impractical beauty standards. Having a chiseled jawline or a tight waist might influence the perception of people around you. Tackling this controversial blog post won’t give a straightforward answer, but maybe we could highlight what is real and what is not.
The effect of beauty on people could start as early as birth, and this effect extends to school years, higher education, and entering the job market. Good-looking could also have a greater rate of approval from the crowd, and gender plays a large role in gaining approval. Moreover, weight also has an impact concerning specific types of jobs. This could also help us understand the mechanisms behind the huge beauty industry.
Congrats, you’ve scored high!
Your wife just gave birth, and all your relatives are eagerly waiting outside the hospital room to see the new family member. To your luck, you are married to a movie star, and the baby is the most beautiful being you will be observing for the next few months (in the middle east, they say that a monkey is a dear in his mother’s eyes, so it’s debatable.).
When your family sees the baby, you could expect comments like “OMG, he/she is soy cute” or maybe “he looks just like you” or even “this baby looks like he is gonna be successful”. The last comment, which probably came from your millionaire uncle, has some truth to it. The approval your child received on his first day in this world will most likely extend to his educational years. Prettier students are expected to have higher grades during school, and surprisingly, this argument holds in the United States. Those who are perceived as attractive will school marginally higher than their average looking peers. Furthermore, they are anticipated to pursue and excel at university. However, this argument does not hold well across all cultures. In some countries, there isn’t a true relationship between good looks and academic success.
The job market.
The dynamics of the job market are ever changing, and good looks play a major role in your chances of getting hired. According to research, interviewers are more likely to lean towards better looking job candidates. The flawed logic behind this phenomenon is that prettier people are perceived to be more competent, trustworthy, and approachable. The same logic could be applied to candidates running for government positions. Moreover, good looks could boost your wage or even increase your chances of getting a work promotion.
However, this logic might not hold perfectly in concern to certain jobs. Due to stereotypes, good looking females might find themselves at a disadvantage in certain work fields. For example, pretty girls are not expected to perform properly regarding construction work or trucking. Moreover, they are perceived to be incompetent when it comes to being a cop. Being a cop requires high levels of discipline and tolerance, and according to surveys done in the United States, the crowd thinks that they are all but that. However, in jobs like modeling, large corporations are trying to diversify the modeling pool by creating new categories. Nowadays, it’s not weird to see an overweight model, or a model who suffers from vitiligo. Some people might argue that this is a dirty marketing stunt by large companies to increase their sales, but it appears to gain the approval of the public.
The beauty industry
As of 2023, the worldwide beauty industry is estimated to be as worth 579 billion USD, and its all for a good reason. Beauty companies have successfully utilized the publicly approved beauty standards in order to sell more and provide more diversified products. The beauty standards instilled in the minds of people has helped in creating well known trademarks of beauty like Sephora, Ulta, Dermstore, and many others. Furthermore, beauty companies have gained the power to shift what is thought to be the accepted form of beauty.
The presentation of overweight models, as well as make up for men was utilized through the ever-growing wave of social inclusion and acceptance of minor groups. This could conclude that people have minimal control over beauty standards, and instead the large corporations are those who practice the largest influence over consumer preferences. This issue makes me think whether the accepted beauty standards is a real existing thing? The accepted beauty standards have changed and shifted so many times across history and across the world, and the magnitude of the shift is sometimes mind bending. Large companies are always ready to launch new products that seem to be aligned with the public, but this could be the other way around. It could be true that those money sucking companies shift the public perception towards their own benefit, by creating new problems that are solved by their own products.
Conclusion
in the end, fixations on beauty might not be a real thing, and in my opinion, it’s not your god given good looks that will land you the job of your dreams. Looking groomed and contained is in play and will most probably be the main reason you landed that job. Questioning the given standards is important for the navigation of such tricky issue. The job market advantage might seem unfair to some people, but thinking about it, it might make sense in some fields. Modeling needs no pre-dictated educational requirement and most of the work it requires is provided through a divine gift, and there is no shame in that. The same logic could be applied to jobs that require physical effort. Most of the time, construction workers are built like a rock, and this is a job requirement that helps fend off exhaustion and on-site injuries. As cliché as it sounds, true beauty extends beyond the large lips and wide shoulders, but is presented in our personal choices, beliefs, and our ability to manifest our abilities to the benefit of society.