I’ll throw my lot in with those who say good-looking women have plenty of advantages while good-looking guys don’t really get a leg up that much.
If you buy into the notion that guys do most of the hiring and most of the managing, why are they going to give a good-looking guy an extra break (Skald notwithstanding)?
This is what I came in to post, basically. I think there’s a smoother road in some situations, but also the unwanted attention and stuff can give them a kind of skewed existence.
Field sales people, particularly those doing cold calls, do better if they’re good-looking; receptionists are more likely to talk to them. It’s obviously irrelevant for the inside sales people, who only see their customers in person once a year.
I can’t speak for every exceptionally good looking person I’ve known, but as with most anything, being exceptionally attractive is a double-edged sword. I know people who’ve gotten a lot of opportunities because of it, but also have a lot of sad stories to tell, as well.
Having easy access to what you want, mainly due to your looks, leaves open the possibility for a lot of objectification. While I know some people who have come to accept a measure of it, overall, they’d almost all agree that it’s not favorable. Most really don’t like the attention, and it becomes very transparent/old, rather quickly.
(Again, just with those that I know, personally.)
I believe that attractive people clearly have an advantage or the rest of us. There was a recent morning news story on a chick who was a “looker” in Manhattan and when she dropped her papers, bystanders readily helped her. When she donned a fat suit, she was virtually ignored. And Skald, I’m pretty sure that if most people would be honest, they would say the same about hiring the more attractive candidate. They may work a little harder to find a smidgen more qualifications in the attractive one to rationalize their choice, though.
But that’s different. Being attractive has a quantifiable effect on job performance in that case. But for Joe College who just wants to get a job stocking groceries over the Summer? His good lucks mean shit to the guy hiring. Jane College on the other hand…
Being attractive IS a qualification when it comes to field sales, though I work hard to ignore it when it comes to female candidates. A big part of the job is just getting the receptionist to talk to you. Charm works as well, though.
It’s irrelevant for insides sides. Admittedly the single best IS person I know is a hot blonde, but her appearance is irrelevant there; it’s her phone presence and her personality, and overall ferocious intelligence. Hell, I probably need to give her a raise just to forestall her being poached by a field manager, though that’s kind of pointless.
See, but then we’re back to trading stories about how attractive people react to their attractiveness on the job. I remember a few years back, I hired a young woman who was very pretty, but who also wowed me in the interview with all the right words and aced all the qualification tests. Her good looks didn’t matter because she was far and away the best person for the job.
Once she got the job her “I’m pretty, so I don’t have to do work” attitude appeared and she was fired in short order. I later worked with her sister and learned that this has become a pattern with all her subsequent (obviously short-lived) jobs.
I am fairly good looking. Not super model but I get noticed and it does help. It gets you in a lot of doors. Yes, even for stocking shelves at a supermarket, being a clean cut, boy next store, which I am, does help.
Now it doesn’t really help you keep anything. I have just as many problems keeping jog, keepig girlfriends, or whatever, but it opens doors for me.
Mr Supernice guy might never get a chance with a girl as he’s too ugly. But I would get a shot. Of course, as I said, it just opens doors, if you act like a jerk, you get tossed out.
In the case of the person I mentioned, I am sometimes unsure how good-looking she actually is versus how much of it is her personality. I have a dim memory of meeting her when we were first hired, very briefly, and not being impressed with her looks–that is, judging her not ugly, but just slightly above average. But after one or two conversations, I found her hugely attractive. The other guys in the office have similar opinions about her: the longer you know her, the better she looks.
It is obvious to me it DOES make a difference. It’s a shame, and go define beauty*, right? Yet, it is somehoe hardwired in us to be this way. From Hollywood on down to the playground, those with beauty* (again, go define it) find things come easier to them.
*By defining beauty, I mean it’s true you don’t have to be a god or goddess. I believe there’s some wiggle room there, but that’s part of the REAL facts of life. 
The cold-hearted facts of life. Hey, what else keeps the cosmetics industry and plastic surgeons in business, right?
Of course they do. There are disadvantages too, but far less than the advantages. Hell, when I’m looking good, and I’m still not extraordinarily good-looking then, the difference in the way people treat me is too big for it to just be observation bias.
I think extraordinarily beautiful women get better tips.
No, I disagree, I think the “pretty” man was idealized in the 80s, 90s and the first half of the 2000s, but now the pendulum has swung back the other way. Look at the female reaction to Daniel Craig. You could flood a mid-sized metropolitan city with the amount of wetness that Daniel Craig’s Bond produced in women, if all of the online commentary and conversations (including on this very board) are any indication.
The “pretty” guys are only idolized by girls under 16. That’s IT. Look at Zac Efron. He has nearly perfect facial symmetry, maybe the most perfect of any male celebrity currently in the public eye - just like a Nicholas Hilliard portrait. Who takes him seriously? Nobody. He’s relentlessly mocked by everyone who’s not 14 and female.
I have sort of the opposite story, where I’d been friends with her for a long time, but she turned me down because, as I found out, I was “too good” for her. I kicked myself about it for a long time, but I eventually realized that it was exactly that sort of perspective why things never would have worked between us among other things. But now she’s married to a guy that treats her badly, so… meh.
Yes, and this is why I also tip based on an appropriate percentage, I don’t want to over-tip because she’s hot and gave mediocre service or under-tip because she’s unattractive but gave good service.
You’re still better off if you had parents who loved you as a kid than ones who simply gave you good bone structure.
It could be a function of location and age as well. I do find it a bit less often now than I did a few years ago, but I have gotten more than a few rejections for being too muscular. While I am defintiely muscular and I’m a far cry from the freakish side. The times I have gotten comparisons, they were almost always guys that were definitely more slender than average. Then again, I’ve also gotten rejections for other seemingly positive attributes like too smart, too compatible, perfect except for something utterly trivial, so maybe my sample is skewed from women giving weird reasons for breaking up with me and that was just one of the more common ones perhaps because it’s tangible and not necessarily overly superficial.
And sure, I see relentless mocking of the likes of Zac Efron and Justin Beiber, but it’s largely by men. When I’ve heard women comment on them, it’s typically not been that they look like girls but, at least with the latter, that his music is terrible.
People can make themselves look less attractive. Generally they dont.
Im guessing they view it as an advantage overall.
Otara
I am an extremely handsome man, and let me tell you, it makes a difference. And I get better looking as I get older and more distinguished. Complete strangers often come up to me after I step into a line in front of them and say “just fuck yourself, you entitled son-of-a-bitch!” And knowing that I will shortly find some privacy, lube and a mirror, I smile and say knowingly, “my, you have good taste, but how do you know my mother?”
I don’t think being beautiful helps you deal with any of the basic problems of the human condition. Even if it makes it easier to find love (questionable) does it make it any easier to make love last? Does it makes it less painful when love fails?
It doesn’t help one bit when you’ve got a beautiful new baby that WON’T STOP CRYING.
To be all current eventy, earthquakes and hurricanes will smash your house even if you’re gorgeous.
Being beautiful doesn’t change the fact that you will one day die and so will people you love.
I voted no easier or harder than for other people.