Although Portland is the whitest big city in the US, people in Portland embrace the diversity of culture in many ways. However, as an Asia-born, Asia-grown person, I have been experiencing eyes lingering on me longer than I had ever felt. Asians have always been a minority in the US’s history. It should not be surprising that I get more looks here.
Despite the “looks”, K-Pop has become a thing in the United States in recent years, which certainly gained different looks than I did. While K-Pop has been popular in Asia for almost twenty years, how do K-Pop stars like BTS and Blackpink suddenly shine in the western world? Don’t different cultures have different aesthetic standards? Is it because they are so good-looking that they break the standards? Is it because of their outstanding dance that makes them too attractive to think about the differences? That makes me wonder: Does being attractive bring more career chances and more life benefits?
Physical attractiveness
Pursuing beauty and avoiding ugliness has been a long history. Ancient Greeks praised beauty in art and poems, and also brutally sacrificed the ugliest person as a ritual to secure the common good for hundreds of years. Physiognomy had been popularized in Europe for centuries until marked as pseudoscience. Similarly, people in Asia believed facial appearance could predict one’s destiny, and many still believe it. Pursuing beauty seems like human nature, but what makes someone attractive? Dr Karl Grammer, professor of anthropology at the University of Vienna, has identified eight pillars of beauty in his research: youthfulness, symmetry, averageness, sex-hormone markers, body odor, motion, skin complexion and hair texture.
Moreover, other research reveals that height (Pierce, C. A. 1996; Furnham, A. et al. 2015) and waist-to-chest ratio (Coy AE, 2014; Fan J, 2004) is vital for attractiveness for males. On the other hand, female bodily attractiveness is associated with the waist-to-hip ratio (Kościński K, 2014). In particular, the critical determinant is waist size (Lassek, W. D, 2016).
Halo Effect
相由心生 (Physical appearance is a reflection of mind) — An old Chinese saying.
Pursuing beauty in nature, art, and science, not to mention mates, goes beyond reason. Humans believe that What is beautiful is good (Dion K et al., 1972), which is precisely the cause of the Halo effect: humans tend to attribute positive characteristics to attractive people, such as intelligence, honesty, and generosity.
Due to the halo effect, attractive people have higher incomes, better chances of becoming leaders, and are less likely to be found guilty.
Dr Eva Sierminska, a senior research economist at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Institute (LISER), found that attractive men and women earn 14.9% and 10.9% more than their plain-looking counterparts. Other research showed similar trends. In an experiment where the maze-solving performance determined the wage (unaffected by the attractiveness), the more attractive workers were wrongly considered more capable by the employers and got paid more (Mobius et al., 2006).
Having attractive facial features also increases the likelihood of being selected as a leader (Antonakis, J. et al., 2017). Without knowing the ability of one person, people would use whatever information was available, including their appearances. Additionally, the taller the male is, the higher his wage is (Mads Meier Jæger, 2011; Adams, R. et al., 2018). In fact, 80% of the presidential election winners were the taller candidates in the last century.
Furthermore, the study showed that jurors were more likely to find the plain-looking defendant guilty before careful deliberation (Patry MW, 2008). Because most actors with discretion in the criminal justice system are males, appealing women are less likely to be arrested and convicted. (Beaver KM et al., 2019).
If we look closer into the research (Monk, EP et al., 2021), the data shows that males benefit more from attractive looking than females. Regardless of genders, the beauty pay gap is not equally crucial for different races — Black people have the biggest gap, while white people have the smallest. In other words, being attractive is more crucial for the minority.
Dr Sierminska suggests that plain-looking women were more likely to stay out of the labor force, which could be why females’ beauty pay gap is smaller than males. “Since women may be self-selecting into the labor market according to their good looks, this may alter the distribution of good looks that we observe in the labor market”, wrote Dr Sierminska.
In order to work around the halo effect, many people dress themselves up. Thank god, it kind of works. The research found that grooming can reduce the beauty pay gap, suggesting that the beauty premium can be actively cultivated, although it is half less effective for men (Wong, J.S. et al., 2016).
Are attractive people more capable?
The halo effect demonstrates a human tendency to believe attractive people are more capable than plain-looking people. However, is it just prejudice in favor of beauty, or is it true? No matter the intention, many researchers scrutinized this question over the years. Until now, many results comfirmed that attractive people are indeed more intelligent, healthier, conscientious, extraverted, and less neurotic (Kanazawa, S. 2011; Kanazawa S. et al., 2018). In his research, Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, a Reader (Associate Professor) in Management at the London School of Economics, argued that beautiful individuals had higher salaries because they were more competent than their plainer counterparts. He suggested that cross-trait assortative mating may explain why attractive people are more brilliant. Men with greater resources, higher intelligence and higher social status get to marry beautiful women. Since physical attractiveness and intelligence are heritable, their children benefit from these advantages simultaneously.
On top of that, researchers found that being attractive does bring more money. Research data shows that CEOs with more attractive outlooks brought higher revenues and higher valuations during IPO roadshows. The law firm executives’ facial features positively relate to the firm’s profits. Not surprisingly, CEO fitness correlated with firm performance (Devine et al., 2020). Researchers interpret the reason behind this is that being pretty gives rise to productive interactions with either co-workers or customers. As a result, beauty can be a human capital that generates additional revenue for the employer and higher earnings for the attractive workers themselves (Bosman, Ciska M. et al., 1997).
On the other hand, based on facial feature examination, researchers found that the more violent the criminal offenders were, the uglier they were. Worse, the unattractive faces were exactly why those with criminal records had trouble finding a job and ended up returning to prison.
In sum, what is beautiful is good is indeed true in some ways. Nevertheless, does it mean our inborn appearance determines our fate at the moment that the sperm meets the egg? Is being less attractive doomed to a worse life?
The bounce-back of the least attractive
Despite the above findings, Dr Kanazawa also found counter-evidence. A potential ugliness premium exists (Kanazawa, S. et al., 2018). His research found that physical attractiveness and earnings were not at all monotonic. Both very attractive and unattractive people earned more than their less extreme counterparts. Notably, the least attractive respondents made more than the less attractive respondents, sometimes more than the average-looking ones. The data showed that the least attractive respondents were more intelligent and attained higher levels of education than the less attractive and average-looking counterparts, which was also why most attractive people get paid more than their counterparts. This research illustrates that competence is a more influential criterion than beauty in determining wages. That is, the higher competence you are, the higher chance you can break the beauty spell.
The Recoil of the Halo Effect
Although attractiveness seems to win in all cases, it can also backfire. Researchers found that attractive defendants tend to be treated more harshly except for certain crimes like rape or robbery. Attractive defendants may receive harsher treatment when they do not live up to people’s higher expectations (Mazzella, R. et al., 1994). Males would recommend longer sentences for attractive female defendants and shorter sentences for the unattractive because they tend to rate unattractive female defendants as less responsible (Abwender DA et al., 2001). Although jurors were likely to find plain-looking defendants guilty without deliberation, they tend to change their minds and find attractive defendants guilty after deliberation (Patry MW, 2008). Even worse, the association of physical attractiveness with sexual victimization was strong (Savolainen, J. et al., 2019). For instance, beautiful boys were five times more likely to have experienced child sexual abuse.
Attractiveness is not always a privilege. Attractiveness could exacerbate the likelihood of a board dismissing and replacing a CEO in the wake of corporate misconduct (Connelly, Brian L. et al., 2020). On June 1, 2011, the Village Voice posted, “Is This Woman Too Hot To Be a Banker?”, telling a story about Debrahlee Lorenzana — a head-turning beauty who was fired from her job as a banker at Citibank, claiming that she was fired because her bosses thought she was too hot. “Everything about Debrahlee Lorenzana is hot. Even her name sizzles. At five-foot-six and 125 pounds, with soft eyes and flawless bronze skin, she is J.Lo curves meets Jessica Simpson rack meets Audrey Hepburn elegance”, wrote the post author.
“There is evidence that attractiveness can sometimes be detrimental for women applying for masculine jobs, a phenomenon referred to as the beauty is beastly effect”, said Dr Stefanie K. Johnson, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder Leeds School of Business. She conducted research tracking down the “beauty is beastly effect” and found that attractive women were seen as less suitable than their plainer counterparts for masculine jobs where appearance is unimportant. Dr Johnson suggested that pretty women may elicit negative reactions when they break the norm that they should do feminine jobs. On the other hand, her colleagues suggested that people do not trust attractive women because they believe beautiful women could exploit them. To make things worse, people with that belief may consciously retaliate against attractive women.
The cultural variability of beauty
Is being pretty really a blessing? Beauty can be a privilege, but it can also be a penalty sometimes. Being attractive or unattractive is beyond a personal choice. Besides, beauty standards change over time.
“Beauty is not fully objective, not fully subjective,” said Dr. Neelam Vashi, assistant professor of dermatology at Boston University’s School of Medicine. Patricia Wexler, a cosmetic dermatologist in New York City, said she had witnessed significant changes in patients’ perceptions of beauty during thirty years of practice. This phenomenon did not only happen in the United States. In Taiwan, double eyelids have been the critical attractiveness factor for decades. Nevertheless, when K-pop arose, single eyelids became trendy. Beauty may have constant attributes, but it can also be influenced by social or cultural dynamics.
Even Prof. Grammar, whose research identified the eight pillars of beauty, had further explained the cultural influence: “The eight pillars of beauty are construction rules. As long as you adhere to the construction rules — such as averageness and symmetry — then the specific content can vary”.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
The more I read, the more I am inclined to believe the halo effect, and its recoil, are self-fulfilling prophecies.
Dr Sierminska’s research found that the beauty gap starts in childhood, with beautiful children attracting more attention and developing more confidence than their plainer peers. The finding implied that physical attractiveness already contributes to developing one’s human capital in childhood for future employment (Sierminska, E. et al., 2015). This work re-confirmed old research results — a child’s attractiveness positively predicted his performance. A child’s attractiveness was significantly associated with the teacher’s expectations about how intelligent the child was, how interested in education his parents were, how far he was likely to progress in school, and how popular he would be with his peers (Clifford, M. M. et al., 1973). Since a teacher’s expectations about a child strongly influence his actual behavior (Rosenthal, R. et al., 1968), it’s reasonable to infer that a child’s attractiveness positively impacts his performance.
If attractive children receive overrated praise from teachers, parents, and peers due to the halo effect, they will live up to this feedback. These encouragements make them become whom we expect them to be. Similarly, when we degrade or discriminate against unattractive people, they will correspond to the same way we treat them. Attractiveness gains better treatment, leading to better performance, and vice versa.
Are good-looking people really living beautiful lives?
Even though schadenfreude or vengeance comes to attractiveness sometimes, I believe being attractive does make people live a better life, especially for men and Whites.
Attractive individuals are more likely to attract more attention from their teachers and parents, have more positive interactions with their peers, and develop higher intelligence and more communication skills that enable them to obtain higher attainments.
It does not mean that the less attractive people are doomed to failure. Individuals without an inborn attractive outlook may know the world is unfair at an early age. They may take action to turn the table and focus more on their brains rather than their body. As long as they are high achievers, they have more cards to play on the table.
A fairer world
Beauty is a double-edged sword. We do not get to choose to be born beautiful, but we can choose to look beyond.
It is unfair to underestimate the potential of unattractive individuals. It is unfair to retaliate against attractive individuals when they break the expectations completely of others. It is unfair to judge attractive women as less suitable for masculine jobs. It is loathsome that attractive individuals are more likely to become sexual victims.
As a member of a society with egalitarian ideals, I believe making an effort to eliminate both the beauty privilege and the beauty penalty is the way to a better life for everyone.
People may argue that pursuing beauty is a biological instinct. However, we are not animals. Democracy is a human choice rather than a biological instinct. History has proven that humans can overcome animal instinct with rational and cognitive minds to pursue better lives for the public rather than individual desires.
More questions than answers
This research leaves me with more questions than answers: How do beauty standards shift or expand? How did K-Pop capture the attention of western audiences? Why is being attractive more crucial for people in marginalized groups? If the discrimination against race is true, does being attractive help minorities escape discrimination? Are stunning minorities more likely to break the glass ceiling? What’s the racial distribution of K-pop fans?
There is not much research on how Asians’ appearances affect their life in the United States. When searching and digging into studies, I found that most data only includes Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks. Asians disappeared in statistics. With the rise of K-Pop, I wonder if I can see more attention to Asians in scientific studies soon.
Appendix: Fun Facts
- Biologists believe the signals of beauty (eight pillars of beauty) possibly reflect human health conditions. Yet, no solid direct evidence for these connections has been proven.
- In Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful, Dr Daniel S. Hamermesh, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, indicated that below-average-looking men earn 17% less than those considered good-looking while below-average-looking females earn 12% less than their attractive counterparts. That is, good-looking workers earn a total of $230,000 more than those with below-average looks throughout a career. However, in Taking Beauty’s Measure, Prof. Rachel Shteir, an associate professor at the Theatre School at DePaul University, questioned the validity of the data source. She is not the only one doubting the effectiveness of the data. It’s hard to verify the truth since I do not have Beauty Pays in hand. Therefore, I took the numbers from Dr Sierminska instead. Her research is open online and provides a broad view of the worldwide labor market based on a global data set. In addition, she explained the cause and effect very well and was honest about the limitations of the data and research.
- Dr Catherine Hakim, a British sociologist specializing in women’s issues, promoted a controversial idea that female attractiveness can be an erotic capital, which is independent of class origin, to advance women’s careers and enable social mobility.
- Dr Ellis P. Monk Jr., an assistant professor of Sociology at Harvard University, exhibited that there was not much difference in male attractiveness in race (female attractiveness has not much difference in Whites or Hispanics). However, Whites still get paid more. It makes me believe attractiveness is not the main factor of microaggression or discrimination. The data in his paper, Beholding Inequality: Race, Gender, and Returns to Physical Attractiveness in the United States, is worth taking a look if you are interested in how attractiveness differs in race and gender.
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