I visited my Dad last Friday, and he and I have had an ongoing discussion for years now about whether highly attractive women generally have an easier time getting through life because people (men in particular, but women too) are willing to go the extra mile for them or cut them a break (such as on a speeding ticket). I just wanted to get an idea of what the SDMB thinks. Is this true? Do highly attractive men get a break, too? What do you think?
[del]Well, speaking as a Highly Attractive Person, I[/del] Oops, sorry. Wishful thinking.
I think that gorgeous people have an easier time starting out in life. Only starting out, though. Sooner or later they will run into a situation where looks are not an advantage, and then they’re in trouble if they don’t have anything else to go on.
Absent an immediate cite, I’ve read a dozen or more stories on studies done that show that attractive people - **male or female **- are strongly favouted, often unconsciously, by others.
It’s an old joke that to be a CEO of a big corporation you have to be tall and have good hair, but the joke has a lot of truth to it.
Exceptionally good-looking people, male or female, are generally treated better than less good-looking people.
The good news is, no one stays pretty forever.
There was a thread about this a few months back. It took a while, but some of us finally weighed in;)
I think there are the little things, like getting good service or compliments, but I’m not sure they’re setting anyone up for life. Plus there’s the other side of the coin, the idea that any accomplishments of a beautiful woman must be due to her looks rather than her talent. The truth is, this may be partly true, through no fault of her own. She may have gotten her first job, her first rung on the ladder, because the boss wanted to sleep with her. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t work just as hard, and it doesn’t mean it’s something she thinks of, consciously. Just as most caucasians in clean clothes don’t think ‘Wow, I’m so glad that cop believed my side of the story after that car accident and I didn’t get followed around that store today.’
Yep. Pretty people do get breaks. Pretty people that may not be geniuses (gasp!) also hang around a lot more than regular/ugly folk do.
I’d add to this that average- and below average-looking people often have to work harder to develop a winning personality in order to compensate for their less than gorgeous looks.*
The good news is, a winning personality is forever. 
*I have no cite for this, other than personal observation, so feel free to prove me wrong!
Pointy Haired Boss: Ah…his hair should silver nicely.
I think being attractive is like having money or being smart. You take for granted problems that less attractive (or less wealthy or less intelligent) people have, but you have a whole set of new problems that they can’t comprehend or relate to. Mo’ money, mo’ problems so to speak.
Certainly being attractive offers many advantages. It’s easier to make friends or find dates simply because people would rather be around better looking people. On the other hand, those relationships can be more superficial. An attractive young woman can probably sleep with a lot of guys if she wants. But those guys might be the sort of guys who can get any girl they want and don’t really care about them.
Also, I’ve seen the effect an attractive woman has on an office full of otherwise ordinary people. While they turn a lot of heads, they are often not taken seriously or simply viewed as window dressing. Often it is assumed that she slept her way to wherever she is.
Also consider an unattractive person who is quiet and withdrawn is considered “shy”. An attractive person who is quiet and withdrawn is often thought of as “stuck up”.
Joel Achenbach (who used to write the “Why Things Are” column in the Washington Post) once cited a study which concluded that the impact of being very attractive was different for men and women, but still noticeable:
It ranked people from 1 (unattractive) to 7 (very attractive) and examined correlation between attractiveness and (what they defined as) success.
The conclusion: for women, there was a direct correlation between attractiveness and success. On average, 7’s did better than 6’s; 6’s did better than 5’s; etc.
For men, there was NO correlation except for the very highest. 7’s did better than everyone else, but 6’s no better than 5’s, etc.
So, a guy has to be movie-star handsome for it to make him more successful; anything less is irrelevant. But a women’s success is more directly influenced by her attractiveness. So the study concluded.
My cousin married a woman who had been a part-time fashion model who was very studious and shy. She entered a profession (some researchy medical field) where, she swore, it worked against her to be noticed and thought attractive. At work, she deliberately dressed and groomed herself to look nerdy, and claimed that it helped her career.
You know, there’s an episode of South Park (Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society), where one character, Bebe, gets tiny little niblets of boobs, as is befitting a 9 year old. Suddenly, all the boys who once ignored her begin to think she’s really smart, funny, interesting, etc. I don’t think they ever actually called her hot, though.
I have found this to be true of how hot women are treated by men, in my experience. A very attractive woman gets absurds amount of attention is credited with a lot of positive attributes that wouldn’t be credited to a less attractive woman.
The downside is that I think average looking women tend to assume that very attractive women lack certain attributes (intelligence, charisma, wittiness) and chalk up all their success to their looks.
Ah, yes, of course, that’s what I’ve been doing. 
I do think that people tend to be nicer to you the more attractive you are. I can range from looking pretty dumpy to pretty cute, depending on how much effort I put into my looks in a day, and I feel like people respond better when I look better.
Oooh, oooh, I have another somewhat relevant personal anecdote that is similar to bufftabby’s
Up until about 6 months ago, I basically considered myself fat and unattractive, and never really put any effort into my appearance. Around that time I started to hang out with a group of friends that loved to go out to bars and clubs and did so about 2-3x/wk. So, I realized that I would have to put work into the appearance front. I lost quite a bit of weight, new haircut, dermatologist visit, and started observing other trendy women to decide what to wear when I go out.
Anyways, so a couple of weeks ago my friend had a huge birthday bash, and I met some of her male friends whom I hadn’t seen for about 6 months. Some of them barely remembered me, and others didn’t at all, but a few who barely acknowledged me the first time we met paid quite a bit of attention to me this time around.
So yes, how a woman looks certainly determines how much attention men pay to her. Although that’s probably not really all that controversial, and only tangentially addresses the OP. Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting.
I saw an experiment on this, and without fail, the good looking person was assisted immediately when they asked for directions. The less attractive person got half answers or was completely dismissed. It’s the sad truth.
I’d say there are definitely some advantages to being a good looking woman, but there are also some definite disadvantages.
The main advantage is that a lot of men (and some women) will go the extra mile for you, and favour you in certain situations.
One negative is the types of people you will attract, as well as the types of people you will miss out on attracting.
On the balance, I’d say it’s better to be a reasonable/regular looking woman than be at an attractive/unattractive extreme.
Also, Is water wet?
“Do beautiful women have an easier time in life?” for women I think this is absolutely true. I happened to catch a TV show where they took identical, very attractive twins and put a fat suit and makeup on one of them. They followed them through everyday activities: shopping, getting on subways, asking for help. And the non-fatsuit twin was always given much more attention. And in many instances, the fatsuit twin was completely ignored. It was kind of sad, but it certainly showed that there is an effect.
Not sure if the same applies to men, though. For most things men seem to be more graded by accomplishment, not just appearance. But for certain positions (like sales), it seems that appearance definitely is favored.
The most beautiful girl I’ve ever met is one of the most insecure people I know.
She’s worried that her husband only loves her because of her looks - she’s funny, very nice, and very smart, but he only compliments her looks. She’s afraid of getting into an accident because she wonders if her husband will leave her for a better looking woman if she’s scarred.
Some women look at her and just see “competition” although she doesn’t have designs on anyone else’s man. I’ve seen the look on some women’s faces: almost anger that she’s there.
One of my friends actually asked me how I felt when we hung out (she didn’t think any guys would talk to me if the beauty were around).
She has few female friends and that’s sad because she’s a wonderful person.
This is a usual discussion amongst my social group and our conclusion is that Girls That STart Out As Very Pretty-Fucking Gorgeous really coast by in life on their looks and minimum amount of talent or smarts.
Every one of the women we base this on who are Good Looking to Fucking Hot are trainwrecks in their personal life. It is only two women we have based it on, but you should see just how pretty they are. It makes us want to go full-lesbian on them, until we realize they are headcases. Granted this is a very small section of femalehood to paint a wide brush, but as we have shared our tiny findings with others and have heard similar stories.
I think they ( women and men) get use to the attention and the fawning and the catering and eventually coast by on that for decades. Men can go longer if they don’t pork out, women peak in their late 30’s and by mid 40’s, it is over because society has no use for a woman in her 40’s or older.
Nicole Kidman, I feel, is a prime example of Gorgeous to look at, but doesn’t offer much. ( Maybe she was controlled too much by Xenu, she seems a little more interesting now that she married Keith Urban, but her movies still suck.)
Which is the advantage women get - a good looking woman can be stunning in the right clothes and makeup - and “passable” in frumpier clothes.
And Helen Mirren may not be stunning forever, but she is a woman who has been stunning for far past middle age. As women age, beauty changes, but there are a lot of older women who are still attractive. And attractive enough to change your perceptions of them and reactions to them.