It’s the eternal office mystery – why do the prettiest or handsomest people at work 55 per cent people in India and Brazil think you can get away with less work as long as you look good never sweat, are never in a rush, and never have bad BO 55 per cent people in India and Brazil think you can get away with less work as long as you look good when they come home from a hard day?
There might be one answer, but believe it at your own risk – after all, it’s only skin deep. According to a Synovate survey on beauty, 55 per cent people in India and Brazil believe that good looking people can get away with less work. DT spoke to a few Delhiites to find out if they were part of the 55 per cent, and came up with some heartburn, and some stubborn belief in merit. Which of the two do you feel?
Well, yes...
The people who said yes, the lookers actually did get home earlier and get to have a life, blamed only themselves for it. “See, it’s not about how much work good looking people do or don’t do, but what other people do for them.
Yes, the levels of acceptability are lowered for people who look pleasing,” admits theatreperson Aamir Raza Hussain. “I mean, if I had a pretty secretary who made a thousand spelling mistakes per page, I’d be more likely to explain things to her gently. If she were short, fat and ugly, however...” and he leaves the workday from hell to the imagination.
Ad executive and musician Surojit Dev is not quite so introspective. “Obviously they do! Especially in a service industry, you do use your beauty and charm to get out of work. Even if the biologically blessed don’t actively use their charm, they know that it’s a weapon they have at their disposal. Typically, the office charmer, for instance, would not hang around with colleagues at the office, but would go out with them. ‘Oh, let’s discuss this over lunch’, or ‘Oh! Let’s go out for a drink’. It’ll be five minutes of work-related conversation and 30 minutes of chatting,” he says.
‘Of course not!’
Fashion and costume designer Nikhar Dhawan chooses to see it as another kind of work. “Even if you’re working on your looks, it’s a kind of work, isn’t it?” she asks. “I totally disagree with people who think beauty can get you out of work. If you’re pretty and dumb, you can’t get anywhere. Appearance matters, yes. A shoddy guy wouldn’t be taken seriously. But as for getting away with less work, I don’t think so.”
Coleen Lobo has also found the workplace quite fair, pun unintended. “That’s not really true,” she says of the survey’s findings. A marketing and communications manager in the hotel industry, 23-year-old Lobo says, “It hasn’t happened to me. The higher the expectations, the more I try to meet them and go beyond. How you look doesn’t matter.”
Not very pretty insights
There are those, however, who provide unusual insights into the issue. Ranjita Chaney, a 28-year-old art curator, says there might be a slight advantage, not because of looks, but gender.
“I would say it’s easier for a woman to get work done,” she says. “Even if I’m pulled over by the police on the road, say, I’d get away with much more lenient treatment than a guy. In general, the fact that women are considered the weaker sex works in their favour. It tends to happen that way, not that you intend to use your gender to get away easily. And of course, if you dress decently, that matters. If I dress like a punk, I won’t be perceived as a serious curator. But beauty is not an issue. In fact, women are more competitive,” she adds.
Shubha Menon, however, has seen so much of it that she can profile the serial work-shirker – she’s a bombshell. And yes, it’s a she. “Women do it more often,” says the ad exec. “She’s typically the one who’ll smile at everybody, flaunt pretty dresses, flutter her eyelashes at the boss... I’m not saying she’s dumb; she could be smart. She’s just a... better-looking smart cookie. I haven’t seen many men doing that, and women aren’t anyway as forward with good looking men than the other way round.”
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