Motion for debate: Does beauty open doors to a better professional and emotional life?
Proposed by Rebeca Arévalo
“Betty, la fea” was the first TV serie which dealt with the controversy of beauty at work. Does beauty make you more acceptable at your work, or even, in the society? If you compare both photos, and you are asked to choose one of these women to work with, I’m sure that you’ll choose the one on the right, meanwhile the one on the left will be spurned. Why? Do you know that the one on the right is more efficient doing her work only looking at her appearance? Does really ugly people have problems in their daily life because of their appearance? Are we giving more importance to physical beauty than to the spiritual one?
Nowadays, lots of TV programs are trying to show this problem to the society thanks to series similar to this one. Are his series a good tool for increasing the self-esteem of ugly people, or are they only making a larger gap between the ugly people and the good-looking ones? Do stereotypes count so much for being accepted in a job or for having a rich presonal life in our society?
Now, it’s your time. Do you think that good-looking people have more facilities in our society, even if they have a low level of knowledge? Join in!
Comments»
It does. Before going to a meeting, for example to get a job, the first think you do is have a shower, put on your best clothes, comb your hair and dab a little perfume on your wrists or behind your ears. Because in our western world if you don’t look tidy, clean and smart you won’t probably be in the short list for a job or whatever.
It’s not fair, I know, but such is life!
If you look untidy, ugly… it means that you don’t look after yourself so, how can you be able to be in charge of something.
But appearance it is only the first step. After that first impresion you have to prove that you are reliable, that you can do the job properly. If not, unless you flirt with your boss, you take advantage of or exploit your mates…you’ll be fired.
But obviously, beauty gives you a head start in life.
My answer is yes, of course, yes. Only by switching on the TV and watching one of the programs in which a debate is carried on, we can realise that good-looking and silly people are yelling without order, as if they were trying to show how well they can shout. They don’t respect the others while they are talking, they insult their partners and they can’t speak their own language without mistakes. But… They are nice to people’s eyes, that’s why they keep on working on the best jobs without knowing that the word “manners” is also in their dictionary.
In my opinion, it isn´t true that beautiful people get the best jobs. When you are studying, teachers evaluate your knowledge and your good behaviour, they don´t take care of your appearance. It´s true that winners of beauty competitions appear on TV programmes, but their celebrity disappear very easily. Most of the people who appear on TV study journalism at University.
although harly anybody admitt it, everibody is influenced by the physical appearance.sometimes we don´t realize that we are always taking decisions in order to find a good looking and in an indirect way we refuse people who are not very lucky in this way.It is a pity but this is the reality
Beauty gives you a head start in live. If there’s nothing more important for parents than their children, I know as a fact ( because I read it in psychological books) that beauty babies get much more attention and care from their parents than the ugly ones.
As Javier said, it’s not fair, I know, but such is life!
We live in a society in which Physical appearance is incredibly important ,but also the media has so repeatedly exposed to us the concept of attractiveness.Most of people put their bodies into the discipline of the diet or eat little enough just to achieve perfect bodies,although all those people obsessed with body size or imperfections would fail to achieve a complete self-acceptance.
Fco. Javier, you can’t forget that illnesses such as anorexia or bulimia are very common nowadays between young people, specially between women, but it is also affecting more and more men. What do you think the cause of these illnesses are? Beauty. Beauty is, in this society, one of the most important aspects for being accepted by another people, and for being accepted by your boss too… Or… Haven’t you ever met somebody who has been rejected because of his physical appearance?
Beauty helps to get a job but it isn´t enough. You must have more skills and habilities to get a job. Beauty gives you a better emotional life but if you ´re unhappy it doesn´t solve your problem. Beauty is good to become popular or even admired but you must know that it expires. The older you get the less importance beauty has. Old people value other things such as feelings and character, beauty taker a lower position when you get older or at least they say so…
It is hard but it is true. Our appearance is an outstanding fact in our lifes.
When you apply for a job you usually have to include a photo, that prove that appearance is important for your professional expectations.
Probably it´s not the most important quality for an employer but it plays a full part in the selection programmes.
Your physical aspect doesn’t mind, Pedro? A recent research has shown that people who are good-looking or attractive have the best marks and they are better considered by their teachers. Besides, if a firm needs to employ somebody to deal with the public, who do you think they will take on? And, what’s more, who do you think you will prefer to deal with? Perhaps we are not conscious of the influence of beauty when chosen somebody, but it exists.
I think that Pedro has a good point of view about growing old and giving less importance to beauty. If you go out on saturday night’s you can see that the barmen and barmaids are in many cases good-looking people but in other kind of pubs, for example the ones which are oriented to older people, the barmen don’t have the necessity to be young and beauty, their bosses give more importance to the experience. And in both cases this people deal with the public.
An image. He is not a handsome man, but he is rich and he had very good marks when he was a student:
http://www.pyke-eye.com/a/faces/bill-gates.jpg
“Ugly” People can stand out!
The main problem with television nowadays is in my opinion that all revolves around beauty and perfection.
The most succesful programs are the ones who take normal people without class and a bit overweight and transform them into superstars for youngsters and children to imitate, who cares about the personality of “Betty la fea” when is waiting for her to became Barbie?
Television is continiously telling us that the only important thing in life is having a correct physical appearance, which in my opnion is not onnly a big mistake and a lie, but even the worst example for the new generations, educated in a world of superficiality.
As I see it governments should take measures against this, as we are allowing the media to invade everything.
To Pedro:
Pedro you are not right when saying that “the older you get the less importance beauty has”. The fact is that money rules. Being good-loking is and will be always important, no mater how much money you have and how old you are. We would always like to be handsome, smart, nice, cute… Because we want to be healthy and moreover to look healthy.
Today we are obsessed with physical beauty and nobody thinks of the beauty of the soul. The former is pure fascism, the latter is eternal. What else can I say?
I agree with Alberto, nowadays we live in a hypocrite society, it’s said that physical appearance is not really important but the media bombard us constantly with beauty rules and not many people are able to follow them without effort. Perhaps this is the reason why Spain is the first county in Europe where more aesthetics operations are done.
And, what’s more, what do you all think about these beauty competitions in which miss and mister Spain are chosen? I’m sure you all agree that the most important thing there is physical aspect, and, in my opinion, they are also a place where women are treated as objects because of their beauty and only in order to earn money with the program.
If you are admired you have more open doors than people who are not, but not necessarily people are admired by being gorgeous, people can be admired by lots of things, their personality, their intelligence, their ellegance…
It is true that what it is seen first is the beauty and that fact gives some advantages to beauty, but life is more than that.
So I think that it is, in some way, true that beauty open doors to a better professional and emotional life.
I completly support the idea of the beauty open doors. Because I have never seen un uggly model or un uggly woman working in a pub. However I have seen many men drooling over theese women. Futhermore when you want to get off with some women you always choose the most pretty. It is thus, although we don´t want to recognise this world and us, we act thus.
I have studied in Psychology that the first thing you see of a person is his physic, but then you start to see their inner qualities. So I think if a person is very ugly but very hard-working, he can be very succesful in his work.
Beauty shouldn´t have too much importance in professions not directly related to personal look like fashion, but according to the experts beauty has more importance in our society than most of us want to admit.
Julio we are not talking about if beauty should, or shouldn´t have important in professions. We are talking about if does it have importance. But I agree with you in your last sentece, it´s completly true the beauty has more importance, than people want to admit.