TEXT C Beauty has always been
regarded as something praiseworthy. Almost everyone thinks attractive people are
happier and healthier, have better marriages and have more respectable
occupations. Personal consultants give them better advice for finding jobs. Even
judges are softer on attractive defendants. But in the executive circle, beauty
can become a liability. While attractiveness is a positive
factor for a man on his way up the executive ladder, it is harmful to a
woman. Handsome male executives were perceived as having more
integrity than plainer men; effort and ability were thought to account for their
success. Attractive female executives were considered to have
less integrity than unattractive ones; their success was attributed not to
ability but to factors such as luck. All unattractive women
executives were thought to have more integrity and to be more capable than the
attractive female executives. Interestingly, though, the rise of the
unattractive overnight successes was attributed more to personal relationships
and less to ability than was that of attractive overnight successes.
Why are attractive women not thought to be able An attractive woman is
perceived to be more feminine and an attractive man more masculine than the less
attractive ones. Thus, an attractive woman has an advantage in traditionally
female jobs, but an attractive woman in a traditionally masculine position
appears to lack the "masculine" qualities required. This is true
even in politics. "When the only clue is how he or she looks, people treat men
and women differently," says Anne Bowman, who recently published a study on the
effects of attractiveness on political candidates. She asked 125 undergraduate
students to rank two groups of photographs, one of men and one of women, in
order of attractiveness. The students were told the photographs were of
candidates for political offices. They were asked to rank them again, in the
order they would vote for them. The results showed that attractive
males utterly defeated unattractive men, but the women who had been ranked most
attractive invariably received the fewest votes. It can be inferred from the passage that people’s views on beauty are often______.