The power of beautiful

We all know the trite sayings: beauty is only skin deep, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and one from the prophet Kahlil Gibran: "Beauty is not in the face, beauty is a light in the heart".

Even Sophia Loren got in on the act with "Beauty is how you feel inside ... it is not something physical".

While the ever-hopeful prophet and the drop-dead gorgeous screen siren might have been well-meaning, it appears they were wrong. Beauty, and how humans see it, is all about the physical. It's all about symmetry, facial proportions and how humans, hard-wired from birth, view each other.

Those lucky enough to have passed go and inherited a prize from the beauty gene pool will do better in life, it seems. They are likely to get better jobs, more scholarships, earn more money, sell more product, be more popular. Those who are plain or downright ugly can also achieve those things – they just have to try a bit harder. Yes, we're all born equal, say the sceptics, but some are born a little more equal than others. Like Swiss multi-millionaire hedge fund financier Arpad (Arki) Busson, rich and good-looking, in a rugged playboy way. First he snared supermodel Elle Macpherson, mother of his two children. Now he's engaged to glamorous Kill Bill movie star Uma Thurman.

Forget about invitations to Buckingham Palace. Seats at Busson's annual fundraising dinner in London are simply the most sought-after tickets in European high society. With his little-boy smile and a few smooth words, Busson persuades A-listers and royalty to donate millions of pounds to his educational charity.

Overseas studies show that attractive people not only have a better chance of getting a job, as long as their credentials and intelligence stacks up, but they have a good chance of earning more.

University of Florida researchers found that people who were rated as good-looking made more money, were better educated and were more confident. Their feelings of self-worth led to higher pay.

While a University of North Carolina study found that the perceived attractiveness of university professors correlated to the teacher's overall helpfulness and clarity in the classroom, another study published in 1991 surveyed MBA graduates over a 10-year period and found a relationship between facial attractiveness and salaries.

And a study the same year found that attractive defendants charged with a less serious misdemeanour received lower bail and fine amounts.

Rich Lister businesswoman Sharon Hunter was reluctant to be drawn on the beauty debate, calling the subject "a tricky one". Self-employed since she was 22 – when she co-founded computer company PC Direct – Hunter' has never had to worry about how she looked at a job interview.

But she admits her good looks haven't exactly been a stumbling block. Business editors have repeatedly used her glamorous image to add a bit of sex appeal to otherwise dull pages. Hunter shrugs it off, putting her good looks down to "genetic good luck" and argues that while people might initially be drawn to attractive people, attributes like intelligence, empathy and a sense of humour are more important.

She admires people who "share our values, who make us think, who stimulate us. That's far more lasting, far more desirable than being attractive. "You would always have to say that given the option, most people would say it would be great to be attractive. But it is nothing more than genetic good luck so to hang your hat on that as some sort of achievement in life you would be selling yourself short, to be honest."

But those in the recruitment industry say good looks are an advantage, particularly in front-line jobs like sales reps, receptionists, secretaries and personal assistants, and in certain industries where looks are more important.

One Auckland businessman admits that looks made a difference when interviewing staff for sales rep jobs and reception.

"If they are overweight I don't view that favourably at all." He thinks "good-looking" men and women have an advantage in a selling role.

"There is a reasonable degree of prejudice against fat, ugly people from a client's point of view. If someone is lucky enough to have good looks, people are going to subconsciously treat them differently." Faced with a choice of two secretaries, both with the same credentials and skills, he would hire the better-looking one, he says.

"That's human nature. It's like the car you drive. Why would you drive an ugly one?" Auckland plastic surgeon Martin Rees says ugly people don't make the same progress because "other people don't like to look at them, don't like to engage with them.

"You've got to be intelligent otherwise you don't get a good job. But if you're good-looking and intelligent then you've got all the aces, haven't you?"

Recruitment specialist Chris Hanford says attractive people have an advantage in front-line jobs over applicants not so blessed with good looks. "I believe most people [employers] couldn't help themselves."

But Hanford, manager of Drake's Henderson office, says presentation is equally important for first impressions. "They need to be clean and tidy, nicely dressed. It's how they speak, it's the whole package," she says. For roles which are not front line, good looks do not seem to be such an advantage, she says, as long as the person is well presented.

The feelings of self-worth engendered by beauty start way back in school, when kids are either part of the "in" crowd or they're not. Scott Blanks, director of Auckland's Classic Comedy Club, remembers a childhood in which he never quite fitted in at school so began larking about.

Now he regularly sees examples of the "class comedian" coming through the club, the ones who couldn't penetrate the inner sanctum of the popular, good-looking kids and the gaggle of admirers around them. "They use it as a defence or a way of fitting in. Comedy is a useful way of deflecting aggression." Those young comedians went on to become the "office idiot", always expected to "do something a little outrageous at the annual office party".

But Sharon Hunter remembers that being "cool" at Papakura High School didn't necessarily mean being attractive. There, it was better to be good at netball or softball than have blue eyes and blonde hair.

"That was far more winning".

And, she says, in a country renowned for the tall poppy syndrome, good looks can put Kiwis "on their guard". Asked whether she'd like her two children, George, 11 and Charlotte, 8, to grow up good-looking she says she would rather they turn out "independent, strong, brave, kind".

But there's little doubt that those born with good looks are keen to hold on to them. Plastic surgeons say a good part of their business is the ageing beauties, the ones who have seen a good-looking face in the mirror for the first half of their life and want it to stay that way.

Martin Rees says the person they are looking at in the mirror "isn't the one that their brain is used to seeing. Their images don't match any more. They see themselves as old and haggard, or they're starting to look like their mother or their father." Those clients "put their toe in the water" by having botox or filler treatment, and often move on to surgery.

Another Auckland plastic surgeon, Tristan de Chalain, says beautiful people undoubtedly get an easier ride. He points out that genes play a big part in terms of good looks and that a facelift will make a person look younger but not necessarily more beautiful or handsome.

To improve a person's beauty involves analysis of the aesthetics of the face and altering facial features accordingly.

It is "very gratifying" to do a facelift or an eyelid tuck on a patient who had been naturally beautiful, de Chalain says, "because they look so good afterwards."

But de Chalain also points out that the cover girl images people are subjected to are unattainable. He uses as an example a media research paper on an image of supermodel Claudia Schiffer on the cover of a German fashion magazine.

Schiffer's face had been electronically finished, her skin perfected using filters, so "pimples, large pores and small wrinkles" had disappeared, imperfections corrected, her teeth made whiter, skin browner, and blue eyes intensified.

"Even Claudia Schiffer doesn't look that perfect in reality. If you take a face and you modify it like that, what chance do the rest of us have?"

Much of plastic surgeons' experience and training is used to determine why people want cosmetic surgery, he says. If they are hoping it will solve all their problems or stop their husband having an affair, it will not.

"You spend a lot of your time managing expectations rather than just wielding a knife."