A new special report titled “The Beauty Advantage” on Newsweek.com argues that the quest to look good isn’t just a vain pursuit.
Newsweek surveyed 202 corporate hiring managers and found that 56 percent of them said qualified but unattractive candidates are likely to have a harder time getting a job. More than half recommended spending as much time and money on “making sure they look attractive” as on perfecting a résumé.
When the hiring managers were asked to rate nine character attributes in order of importance for job candidates, looks came in third, after experience and confidence—and before where an applicant went to school.
The report also includes an interactive feature called “The Beauty Breakdown,” which estimates what a lifetime of cosmetic maintenance will cost a “modern diva.” Gathering data from a number of sources—including the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons and Allure magazine—it looks at beauty costs from the tween years through 50 plus for American women, coming up with a lifetime total of $449,127.
For those in their 30s and 40s that included treatments like microdermabrasion, Botox, lip plumping, and laser varicose vein treatments, in addition to hair care, waxing, and tanning. For women over 50, chemical peels and deep line wrinkle fillers were added to the regimen.
For the lifetime total, the amount spent on the face was estimated at just over $314,000, more than treatments on hair, the body, and hands and feet combined.
In today’s economy, spending money on these treatments may not be “frivolous,” the magazine notes.
“Economists have long recognized what’s been dubbed the ‘beauty premium’—the idea that pretty people, whatever their aspirations, tend to do better in, well, almost everything. Handsome men earn, on average, 5 percent more than their less-attractive counterparts (good-looking women earn 4 percent more),” the report says.
Dr. Carney’s Skin Speaks Spa M.D., with five locations in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, offers a range of treatments to help you look your best, including Botox, chemical peels, and wrinkle fillers. (image via Newsweek.com)
You’ve probably seen articles like this in Cosmopolitan, right? A piece from the men’s magazine Details is titled “