Pretty or pretty good

There was recently an article in the papers about how attractive people were more likely to get jobs than less attractive people and I think that that is a sad statement about our society.

There are so many old sayings about this that they are too many to list. Beauty is only skin deep and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, are just two.

What I cannot understand is why someone would choose outward appearances over skills and ability when it comes to hiring. Are people really that shallow and short-sighted? And what does that about ugly or less attractive people? Is this sexism under a different name?

I was raised to believe that hard work, reliability, being good for your word and other silly notions like that we what made a good person, and by extension, a good employee. However, this does not seem to be the case.

If beauty is the most reliable criteria for success then being less attractive has become a liability and the beginnings of a new diversity category. And similar to the other categories of diversity, beyond one’s control. We cannot control how beautiful we are anymore than we can control our gender or our sexual preferences.

And I cannot understand why we should be judged by these criteria rather than criteria that are related directly to our ability to do a job and do it well.
There are already too many areas of diversity that separate groups of people from the main. Adding another category simply moves us in the wrong direction which is away from a more unified society where potential employees are judged from their abilities and nothing else.

I found a quote by the playwright Henrik Ibsen on the internet. It says:” A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.” It is sad to think that someone as clever as Ibsen would be dismissed as naive in today’s working world. I checked his picture and he wasn’t that attractive.

E. Ward