hey guys it's Chelsea from the financial diet and this week's video is brought to you by advisor.com
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on track to reach your goals for 2023 and Beyond and this week we're talking about being hottest
and why it's actually not a Vibe more to the point we're going to be talking about the economics of
pretty privilege The Good The Bad and The you guessed it ugly so for those who haven't been
aware there's been a bit of a discourse happening on places like Tick Tock around the downsides of
being hot I actually made a tick tock responding to one of these and sharing my own personal views
on the subject including an anecdote from when I actually dated someone years ago who was I
think pretty objectively an extremely extremely hot person now I do think that my husband today
is an absolutely beautiful man but this person was like a part-time model and was the kind of
beautiful that gets you like stopped in the street and given free things which for a man
is a pretty unusual level of beauty and in my Tick Tock talking about the downsides of being pretty I
mentioned the fact that I tend to believe and the research that I did for this video does seem to
back it up that there's a bit of a bell curve when it comes to attractiveness and that while being
attractive or more to the point not unattractive can confer a lot of benefits being insanely over
the top attractive can actually start to have a lot of drawbacks and I'll never forget that
my boyfriend at the time once told me he was about 30 at the time so at an age where he was starting
to feel the most intense youth oriented form of his Beauty start to fade that going through life
with fading extreme Beauty was like having someone very slowly turn off a light around you which was
really sad to me at the time and still feels sad but is also totally understandable as a phenomenon
because if you've sort of been moving through the world in a falsely inflated way and it starts to
become a more realistic version of itself that would probably feel like a light being shut off
so although many people were making fun of the tick tocks of beautiful people talking about how
hard it is to be beautiful I actually found myself really empathizing with them in a lot of ways and
remembering just how much it stuck with me when I was up close and personal with someone having
that experience especially as they aged but I also understand why the idea idea of complaining about
how hard it is to be hot could be pretty galling to some people because what is undeniable is that
a certain level of beauty or again absence of ugliness does confer huge benefits and at
the same time that people have been complaining about the downsides of being pretty other viral
tick tocks have talked about what it was like to go from being perceived as not attractive by
Society to being perceived as attractive from an article in the New York Post one influencer
shared about the reality of becoming pretty quote the beauty shared an old photo that showed her at
257 pounds when she claimed that she rarely received any perks these days however kiel's
claims that she benefits from her beauty every single day in a variety of ways as she explained
in a viral video it can be subtle things you wouldn't notice not being charged for that
extra drink or dessert at a restaurant or having someone offer to put the air in your tires instead
of seeing you struggle doing it and that's obviously anecdotal but what's not anecdotal
is the massive ways in which being attractive impacts our social professional and financial
outcome comes I've always been kind of surprised as someone who does a lot of sociological and
cultural commentary how attractiveness really rarely gets addressed as an axis of privilege
when in many ways it's one of the most acute ones in terms of the material benefits that it can have
on our life and part of that I think is because a what is considered attractive really varies
culture to culture for example in the U.S it's very tied up with things like whiteness thinness
Etc but also because beauty is ultimately very subjective it's quite frankly a bit off-putting
to hear people identify themselves as being a member of the attractive Community even if most
would objectively say that that's true and it's also not a static identity attractiveness can vary
depending on a ton of factors but in many cases most acutely with age meaning that even the most
attractive people at a given point in their life are likely to not be considered conventionally
attractive at some point so as an identity and as a form of privilege it's less static and more
subjective than many other axes but to me it's a hugely opportunity to never discuss and analyze
the benefits of attractiveness the way we do the benefits of other identities because again the
difference that it makes in people's lives can be huge as one Vice article puts it throughout the
world Attractive people show greater acquisition of resources and greater reproductive success than
others says one study in another study from 2009 284 subjects rated photographs of people according
to how likable attractive and trustworthy they perceive the person in the photographs
to be results show that attractive individuals were deemed more trustworthy than unattractive
individuals and a lot of the benefits tend to break down along gender lines with different
aspects of attractiveness being valuable to different genders when it comes to men for
example few things have quite as much impact as being tall or more to the point not being
tall quote the relationship between height and earnings is non-linear for American men being
an inch shorter than average correlates with annual earnings of about five percent lower
but being an inch taller than average does not have much impact though men who are about 4 or
more inches taller than average earn slightly more there are not many gains to being tall but there
is a clear penalty to shortness the shorter men are relative to average the less they earn men
more than 20 percent shorter than average 66 inches or less earn at least 10 percent less
short women also earn less but they face smaller wage penalties about half the magnitude of short
men but tall women do out earn their peers each extra inch of female height adds about
one percent more in earnings the economists who controlled for ethnicity and other complicating
factors estimate that non-short people tend to work in skilled jobs that pay more and have more
education short Americans are also more likely to be in poor health and to live in poverty and from
another article quote in fact Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling book blink takes this argument to
another level I pulled about half the companies on the Fortune 500 list asking each company questions
about its CEO in my sample I found that average CEOs were just a shade under six feet given that
the average American male is five foot nine inches that means that CEOs as a group have about three
inches on the rest of their sex but this statistic actually understates matters in the U.S population
about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet or over among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies that number is
58 even more strikingly in the general American population 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot
two or taller but among my CEO sample 30 were six foot two or taller so it's undeniable that
certain markers of attractiveness confer huge benefits financially and professionally and as
I mentioned it also generally leads to people ascribing you better characteristics that have
nothing to do with attractiveness like being more trustworthy likable Etc and this isn't shocking
when we consider just how much this association between attractiveness and worthiness is ingrained
into us even as children for example it's pretty much common knowledge by now but when we look
at Children's Entertainment like Disney movies Etc It's usually the case that the protagonists
the love interest the hero the princess are all beautiful while often the villains are defined by
their physical unattractiveness and sometimes the connection between being unattractive and being
evil is made explicit and direct these characters are ugly because they're evil and their outward
appearance is a reflection of their unworthy Interiors but one of the interesting questions
about pretty privilege is whether or not some of the benefits that develop as a result of this
attractiveness is because of the attractiveness itself or because of this kind of self-fulfilling
prophecy of how more attractive people are treated essentially from birth quote there's
a link between attractiveness and extracurricular high school activities such as Varsity Sports and
student government these activities may help develop skills that are valued in adult labor
markets and attractiveness is also positively correlated with proxy measures of confidence
one channel emphasized in the experimental labor market paper of Mobius and rosenblatt and with
some of the so-called Big Five personality traits particularly extroversion in the absence of
neuroticism the measures of high school experience confidence and personality however have little
effect on the magnitude of attractiveness premium when WLS respondents are in their mid-30s and
early 50s our evidence is consistent with the idea that attractiveness is an intrinsically productive
attribute in early and mid-career labor markets distinct from skills acquired in high school
personality traits and cognitive ability so long story short there is some conflicting data on
whether or not the attractiveness from inception leads people to develop traits that are beneficial
to them or that attractiveness just always allows them to be perceived in a more positive way anyone
who's seen 30 Rock for example will remember the infamous bubble episode with Jon Hamm that deals
with some of the potential downsides of being perceived as hyper-attractive all your life
despite your actual competency or Merit but we'll get into that a bit later but whether or not the
attractiveness privilege is more of a nature or nurturer question what does seem to be clear is
that in our society there's more of a direct penalty for being considered unattractive than
there is a privilege for being considered pretty essentially we've kind of created a
situation where being attractive is all almost considered the Baseline and people who are not
attractive enough are viewed as falling short of that unspoken metric taking it back to Media
for example it's not terribly surprising that our standards of attractiveness would be very high so
much so that unattractive people are punished in comparison when attractiveness and perhaps
more importantly youth are considered a standard across almost all of the media we consume quote Mo
canon teakin in 2010 emphasized that for females ugliness may be a hindrance rather than Beauty
being valuable they write quote the level of Beauty in high school has an effect on criminal
propensity seven or eight years later which seems due to the impact of the level of Beauty on human
capital formation and Hammer mesh and Biddle also note that while Attractive people are paid more
the Premia for good looks are considerably smaller than the penalties for bad looks and they are not
statistically significant so overall the data does seem to paint a picture that there is a window of
attractiveness in which it's not necessarily hyper beneficial but you're also not being punished or
penalized or facing obstacles because of that lack of attractiveness however there is some data to
suggest that there are diminishing returns when it comes to our levels of attractiveness and that
being the kind of hyper attractive that I talked about at the beginning of the video can actually
present a lot of downsides again one of the reasons why those seemingly obnoxious tick tocks
about how hard it is to be pretty don't actually bother me that much from an article in spring.org
although attractive pretty and beautiful people are generally more popular socially there is
some evidence that very attractive people can experience social rejection from members of their
own sex and people in relationships also tend to protect themselves from Beauty By ignoring
it research shows that when we're thinking about love we automatically ignore attractive members of
the opposite sex probably to protect our feelings about our own long-term partner and while it can't
be overstated that people of all conventional levels of attractiveness can experience harassment
and unwanted attention in the workplace there is also compelling data to suggest that very
attractive women in particular can be penalized in the workplace for their extreme attractiveness
that can manage invest in a lot of things like being propositioned for romantic interludes
not being taken seriously by superiors being penalized by other women or just generally having
a perception that they are in the position they're in professionally because of their attractiveness
and their sex appeal rather than their actual Merit and while this is obviously an unfair
judgment to put on anyone what's unfortunate is that in some cases that perception that a person
is in a position because of attractiveness and not Merit and they're living in that hot person
bubble that a person is in a given position because of attractiveness and not Merit can
actually sometimes be true from a BBC article to psychologists this is called the what is beautiful
is good heuristic but fans of the sitcom 30 Rock might recognize this as the bubble Jon Hamm's
character is remarkably incompetent yet manages to live in Blissful self-delusion thanks to his
good looks as a doctor for example he can't even perform the heilic maneuver but somehow manage
to drift through medical school thanks to his natural charm according to the available evidence
the bubble is a reality in education for instance Walker and free vert found a wealth of research
showing that better-looking students at school and University tend to be judged by teachers as
being more competent and intelligent and that was reflected in the grades that they gave them what's
more the bubbles influence inflates over the years there's a cumulative effect explains Freebird you
become more confident and have more positive beliefs and more opportunities to demonstrate
that competence and when it comes to potential downsides of beauty there are even really worrying
ones when it comes to things like medical care that more attractive people might receive from
that same article more worryingly being beautiful or handsome could harm your medical care we tend
to link good looks to health meaning that illnesses are often taken less seriously when
they affect the good looking when treating people for pain for instance doctors tend to take less
care over more attractive people now I don't say all of this to say that pretty privilege
isn't still real as we've discussed it is and there are huge ways that it impacts people but
when you look at the data as a whole it seems more clear that we are punished for being unattractive
rather than rewarded for being pretty this is still obviously a form of attractive privilege
and similar to other axes of privilege creates a situation where you are considered the default
and people who don't live up to that standard are considered the problem but before we're so
quick to dismiss people who might point out some of the downsides of being attractive especially
extremely attractive it's important to remember that those downsides are real and especially for
women can be very difficult to deal with as as we discussed before that perceived Beauty
will inevitably Fade with time even the most attractive women at 25 will eventually not be
perceived at that same level of attractiveness by the time she reaches 55 or 65 or Beyond so you're
essentially starting a game on Ultra easy mode and then progressively moving to hard as you go
often not having developed the skills necessary to compensate for that innate privilege long
story short the economics of being pretty are complicated but what's very clear is that what
you look like has much more of an impact on your life than any of us would probably like to admit
and now it's time for our tfd society member questions of the week reminder that amongst
all of the other perks you get by joining at the join button below or at our patreon you
also get to ask me questions every week that I will answer on my videos let's get into them the
first question says I'd love to learn more about investing in startups and small businesses I've
seen a lot of websites popping up that host investor meetings small businesses similar to
Kickstarter where a small business pitches you to try to buy their product I'm a total newbie
but would love to hear your thoughts on this um in general my thoughts on this are that it's a
very very volatile type of investment and usually when you're considering investing in something
like a small business it should be more for like ethical reasons or creative reasons or because
you want to see that business Thrive or want to see more businesses like that in the world but
it really generally shouldn't be looked at as a financial opportunity because it is so high
risk so in general I would advise against using more of like 10 of your investable income to
go toward that kind of an investment and really treat it as though you're going to a casino and
don't necessarily expect to see Returns on it and are doing it for other reasons besides the
financial ones can you share your thoughts on the Supreme Court affirmative action decision I would
love to see a video on that so we will do a video on this for those who are not familiar here's a
quick headline on what happened with the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action which is
essentially going to have a trickle-down effect of dismantling affirmative action throughout
the country I'll go into more detail on the video obviously but in general what I think
about these kind of issues are that we live in a supremely unfair Society where benefits and wealth
and privilege are conferred on a relatively small group of people and when it comes to things like
for example wealth inequality inherited wealth Etc the Privileges of nepotism and networking
and connections we tend to totally ignore those and to not be offended by them but are deeply
offended anytime someone from a lower income or a more marginalized Community gets anything
perceived as an outsize advantage like we're not rallying against people who get into Harvard
because they're a legacy whose father donated a library to the college were offended by the person
who might have gotten in with a slightly lower test score because they are from a historically
marginalized Community we're not upset at wealthy people taking private jets twice a week to go
visit their friends and party in Aspen but we are offended at the idea that a working single
mother on food stamps might get a little bit extra money one month to be able to take her kids to the
movies so in general I think it's just really indicative of a terrible Trend that we have in
how we perceive privilege and advantages in this country and um yeah it's really disheartening but
I'll do a video on it as always guys thanks for watching and don't forget to hit the Subscribe
button and to come back every Monday Tuesday and Thursday for new and awesome videos bye