Ask HN: How influential can physical appearance be in professional environments?
Well, tangentially related and I don&#x27;t know enough of the topic (I haven&#x27;t delved into it yet) but &quot;pretty privilege&quot; is a thing.<p>Here are a couple of seed links for further investigation (I have no clue about their quality):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;results?search_query=pretty+privilege+" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;results?search_query=pretty+privileg...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&amp;ab_channel=zoeunlimited" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&amp;ab_channel=zoeun...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&amp;ab_channel=zoeunlimited" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&amp;ab_channel=zoeun...</a><p>--<p>I have some ideas, anecdotes and personal experiences on the topic (as I&#x27;m traveling a lot as a digital nomad and I tend to talk to people wherever&#x2F;whenever since I solo travel).<p>I&#x27;m sorry that I can&#x27;t make this comment razor sharp (also in brevity, it&#x27;s tough to do). The reason I&#x27;m sorry for that is because I know that this is a sensitive topic and I might step on some toes. I don&#x27;t intend to, but it might be a bit inevitable. Some people might think that speaking from personal experience is not enough. And yes, it&#x27;s definitely biased, but I am noticing I am learning a lot more about European&#x2F;western society (as a Dutch person even) than I was in the past 10 years simply because I talk to a lot of people.<p>I&#x27;m currently traveling a lot and in daily life I see a huge difference to how people treat you when attractive. In The Netherlands I&#x27;m at best average in attractiveness (I&#x27;ve asked for brutal feedback from multiple people, and I&#x27;m averaging 6 out of 10). However, in other countries I&#x27;m seen as slightly more attractive because I&#x27;m about 190 cm, which is 6.23 feet&#x2F;inches (whatever you Americans use). Dutch people are one of the tallest if not <i>the tallest</i> in the world. So I&#x27;m more common there. Already in Germany, I&#x27;m seen as more attractive due to my &quot;language skills&quot; (Dutch people speak better English than Germans, on average, I definitely do; combined with some conversational German&#x2F;Italian and some basic French). And I do notice the difference. And I&#x27;m beginning to get a hunch that in Southern Europe I&#x27;m even seen as more attractive since they&#x27;re a lot shorter on average.<p>All of this is based on how I interact with women. I&#x27;ve noticed that men don&#x27;t really act that differently around me. I&#x27;ve been in Lisbon and Berlin recently and met all kinds of people. But yea, I&#x27;m seeing my own &quot;pretty privilege&quot; (however marginal) in the dating market. People treat me differently whereas I stay the same.<p>And I&#x27;m definitely hearing stories of how very stereotypically attractive women are getting whatever they want (even if they don&#x27;t want it). I&#x27;m also hearing how stereotypically attractive women are more prone to having experienced sexual violence. So if you think they have it easy: I&#x27;m not going to compare, I&#x27;m not going to judge. I know too little, but what I do see is that less stereotypical attractive women <i>seem</i> to talk less about having experienced sexual violence (again, I might be biased, my sample might be biased, something else might be off - it&#x27;s just my personal experience and it does beg the question to formulate a hypothesis and investigate if one would be an academic feminist&#x2F;psychologist, provided there is no research on it).<p>But looks influence stuff in daily life so hard that it must have a strong effect in corporate culture as well. This is especially the case since men are the assertive sex when it comes to the mating game, and men are holding more economic&#x2F;political power than women.<p>Humans are not robots. We can&#x27;t keep our emotions fully hidden or suppressed. Biases will leak out, whether we&#x27;re aware of them or not. So logically speaking, yes, it will have some effect. A more interesting question would be more: how much of an effect? Will it have more of an effect for women? If you have a female boss&#x2F;male subordinate will it have more of an effect (if the male is attractive)? There are a lot of variables here that might influence the strength of the effect.<p>With that said, I&#x27;ve also experienced how much pure &quot;inner beauty&quot; can do, from both my side and other men&#x2F;women. It can do a whole lot, especially when presented with positivity and optimism. My experience is that a lot of charisma can be trained. Like, I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ll ever be <i>wildly</i> charismatic. But compared to my untrained self, I&#x27;m an order to two order of magnitudes better, and it has definitely helped me to make my inner world more relatable to other people. Knowing how you present yourself in a: 1 on 1 conversation, group conversation and presentation... It&#x27;s important and has little to do with personality and looks (other than that the personality and looks need to be incorporated with how to present yourself, but in all look&#x2F;personality variations - communication skills in being relatable and pleasant to be around with is a skill - even the most hardcore pessimist can be relatable and pleasant to be around with by using his&#x2F;her pessimism as very creative playful humor, for example).