Are you as smart as you look?

            Here's a quote from Sidney Katz, on "The Importance of Being Beautiful":

            "If you're a good-looking male over six-feet tall, don't worry about succeeding at your career." He went on to discuss a survey revealing  that men who were 6-foot-2 or taller earned 12 percent more than men under six feet.

            "We send out three (female) prospects to be interviewed and it's almost always the most glamorous one that's hired." says Edith Geddes of the Personnel Center in Toronto. It's called the "halo effect". If you look like Angelina or Brad, you're more generous, trustworthy, sociable, modest, sensitive and interesting.

            This kind of thing shows up everywhere. A friend of mine, Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist at the University of California in Berkeley, studied male and female flight attendants. Passengers treated them quite differently. Passengers felt more at ease asking for things from female flight attendants, expected more services, and felt more free to criticize them.

             Lena Nordholm presented 289 doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals with photos of eight attractive and unattractive women. They were asked what kind of patients the eight would be. The good-looking women were judged more cooperative, better motivated, and more likely to improve.

             It seems Leo Tolstoy knew that would happen. "It's amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness," he wrote.

            Also check the Greek and Roman exhibits at your art museum. Were the ancient gods and goddesses beautiful or homely?

            So now it's up to you. As a marketing person, are you going to go with human nature, or against it?

            Gloria Steinem, where are you when we need you?