Beauty pays

• By EMILY KERN HEBERT
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 5, 2009 - Page: 1D

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Good-looking people earn more money in the workforce, but that doesn’t mean you should rush to the beauty counter to update your makeup or drop a ton of cash on new clothes.

Those things may help you feel better about yourself, but they won’t increase your earning power, said Daniel Hamermesh, economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Hamermesh visited LSU for a talk titled “Beauty Pays.” The Oct. 29 talk was based on a manuscript that will be published by Princeton University Press next year.

In one of his earlier studies, people were ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 from strikingly handsome or beautiful to homely. Hamermesh then looked at the effects of their looks on their hourly earnings.

Other factors such as education, age, race, height and weight were accounted for, he said.

The result for men was about a 15 percent difference in pay between those at the top of the looks scale and those at the bottom, Hamermesh said.

The effect for women was slightly less.

For those of us who aren’t lucky enough to look like George Clooney or Heidi Klum, there isn’t much you can do.

“The answer is if you’re ugly suck it up,” Hamermesh said.

Hamermesh looked at spending by women on beauty products and the effect on earnings and found a return of only 5 cents for every dollar spent.

“You might feel better about yourself, but it’s not a good investment in your career,” he said.

Even plastic surgery doesn’t pay off.

Hamermesh used the example of the movie “Face/Off,” where John Travolta’s character undergoes massive reconstructive surgery that changes the bone structure of his face.