Gawker.com recently reported that Dov Charney, founder and CEO of American Apparel, had ordered that all the less attractive people who work for the company be fired because, according to an anonymous store manager quoted on the site, "he feels they may be hurting his bottom line."
While Charney says the allegation is false, the fact that the idea didn't sound implausible serves to remind us that when it comes to work, things are always looking good for the good-looking, experts say.
"A person's physical attractiveness has a significant impact on who is hired, who is promoted and, once hired, who gets the higher income," says Gordon Patzer, author of Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined.
Sometimes, it's a matter of what you're wearing. Polishing your appearance can certainly help your career, says Pat Elke, a Toronto-based image consultant.
"Within a tenth of a second of entering a room, people that haven't known you before will form 10 opinions about you based on the only criteria available to them, which is your clothes, your outward appearance and your body language," she says.
Still, iron your shirt and comb your hair all you want; there's not much you can do, for example, to make yourself taller - one measure of conventional attractiveness that can have an impact on a person's career.
In a 2003 study, researchers at the University of Florida looked at what height can do to a person's pay slip. The study found two centimetres in height amounts to about $US789 ($NZ1178) more in pay each month. That means someone who is 183 cm tall can expect to make $US5,525 more each year than someone who stands 167 centimetres.
As well, tall people are 90 percent more likely to become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, according to Arianne Cohen, author of The Tall Book.
Numerous studies have found that the more attractive a person is, the more money he or she is going to make.
In one such study conducted by Daniel Hamermesh, a professor of economics at the University of Texas, above-average-looking people were found to earn 5 percent more per hour than average-looking people, thanks to what Hamermesh calls the "beauty premium."
And it doesn't matter if the hottie in question is flipping burgers or flying planes. Regardless of their job, attractive people were found to make more moolah.
"It's pretty much universal across all occupations," Hamermesh says.
However, physical attractiveness does not confer benefits on men and women equally.
"At the higher executive level, people question much more for women than for men if their looks got them to the position or if their competence got them to the position," Patzer says.
The higher a woman rises in the executive world, the greater the likelihood that her physical attractiveness will detract from her credibility, he says.
In general, though, the beautiful people are given preferential treatment in all walks of life, not just work, Patzer says.
"Society values and likes people of higher physical attractiveness more than (people of less physical attractiveness)." And when we privilege the pretty, we usually aren't conscious of it.
"If you ask people, 'Do you treat people differently based on physical attractiveness?' people will all say no," Patzer says. "Time and time again, we see that their ultimate decision certainly equates with the person's physical attractiveness. They're either not aware of it, which is true to a large extent, or they refuse to admit it."
