Friday, June 27, 2008
Good Looks=Job Opportunities
So I recently began reading Postman and one of the points he made early on is the importance of how someone looks. On page four of the book, he writes about President Nixon's claim of being "sabotaged by make-up men" and that being the reason he lost an election. Is looking good one of the requirements of becoming President? I certainly do not remember reading about that requirement in 8th grade. He also notes that overweight people and bald people have a really low chance of becoming President. This got me thinking. With the exception of Taft, I can not think of any overweight Presidents. More recently, what about McCain who was running for President? Did he not do well because he was too old? Are older people out of the race because of their age? It seems that not only looks but age are a major factor for Presidential candidates. Society has become so obsessed with looks that fashion models starve themselves just to get a chance to walk the catwalk, only people with the right look can become famous, and "normal people" look up to these other people and want to be them because they are "the world most beautiful people." It has become so extreme that people have surgery to change how they look. They spend thousands of dollars for the "right nose", a "perfect pout", or whatever else they manage to find wrong with themselves. Society puts how someone looks before they even consider talent, personality, creativeness, work ethic, etc; looks essentially come before everything else. Is it coming to the point where someone is pretty or handsome can just walk in and get a job without being qualified?
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5 comments:
I don't think our society is as extreme as to grant a person a job, especially a high ranking one, merely based on looks without even checking a person's backround.
While I have not read Postman yet I do believe a book I have read relates very similarily with the idea of good looks being associated with success. That book is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
The general idea in Blink is that people often associate certain words, characteristics, or views with each other. Stereotyping anyone? Take, for example, the word geek or nerd. The picture that first comes to mind is a not-so-good looking person, often with glasses, and possibly intelligence. People often unconsciously label or associate words, places, or ideas with certain things whether they realize it or not.
So going back to the good looks senario, I believe the majority of our society associates good looks with success. Even in Blink a study shows that taller CEOs made more money and were more successful than shorter CEOs. And what do we associate hiegth with? Good looks of course.
What we associate things with I believe depends on our environment, especially when we are growing up when the media and our personal experiences hugely impact our views. Though it may be a stretch, this is similar to the conditioning of decanted babies in Brave New World.
So to finish, in general I would say our society doesn't hand out free jobs to those with good looks but lack the qualifications, but the good looks is definately an advantage that may help a person get a job.
-- Elizabeth Ly
I would have to agree with Elizabeth in the sense that our society is not that extreme. However, you have to realize, 9 times out of 10, it really depends on the job itself. I personally believe that if the employee is going to be seen around the workplace, then beauty will help them out. But if they are not, it shouldn�t matter and hopefully the one with the better qualifications will get the job. For example, if two people are applying for the position of say, a receptionist, the employer is probably going to take the prettier of the two because they might believe that the beauty of the receptionist might have some kind of reflection on the company itself.
On the other hand, if two people are applying for the position of an over-the-phone customer service person, they won�t be seen by the customer. Therefore, looks won�t, hopefully, come into play allowing the better qualified person to get the position.
Jacob, you have articulated a perfectly logical position. Unfortunately, we don't live in a world where logic always prevails. I have some articles in the classroom about an Abercrombie and Fitch case where the accounting manager was fired because she wasn't hot. She never interacted with the public, and she was in all other ways highly qualified. Of course, there was eventually a lawsuit filed against AF, who also tended to hire only white, young, thin -- people with a particular "look". AF attorneys argued that a company whose business IS beauty and fashion has every right to hire within certain appearance parameters, but how then can they justify the firing of the accounting manager?
It may seem as though a good-looking person can just walk in and get the job, but I think that it's a combination of looks and skill.
For instance, some people want to attract attention to their field of career, so they get a good looking person and then all of a sudden, being in that career field is the best thing ever and more people come to it.
This works for modeling. Girls may have watched America's Next Top Model and look at the women competing to be a model, and all of a sudden those girls think, "I want to be a model" because models attract people with their looks and such.
-Alyssa Kocon
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