Q&A from "Plastic Surgery: Are you off your head?"

Wise Readers,

Just how far-reaching is the beauty bias?  Are men’s beauty standards even higher than Hollywood’s?  Can plastic surgery work against you?  Can quirky good looks work for you?  And what’s the guy’s perspective?  

Read on!

From Joan N.: —What about actresses whose plastic surgery hurt their careers—or whose quirky good looks didn’t hurt?  And do cute criminals get lighter sentences?— 

Brilliant article - love it. How surprising even the Harvard dudes [from Kalick’s experiment discussed in the article] didn’t object: “Hey, I only have a photo, I can’t rate anything but physicality here.” I would hope that society is moving away from categorizing folks based on anything but contributions and character, but in the mating realm it seems that evolutionary predispositions still rule.

I’m wondering about the movie actresses who elect not to fix their faces. Barbara Streisand’s nose is trademark and legendary. Ditto for Lauren Hutton’s gapping front teeth. And Jennifer Grey, from “Dirty Dancing”, had a nose job thinking it would lead to more movie roles, but it backfired and she received less.

Maybe being appealing for movie roles is different from being generally appealing for marriage minded men …?

PS: Thanks for the supporting research. I don’t like that thing about 5th grade teachers assuming the cuter kids are brighter kids. I think judges do the same thing. The cuter criminals couldn’t have possibly done the crime … Parallel? Bah.

Duana’s response: —Symmetry rules, but when does a person really need plastic surgery?— 

Joan, thank you, and that’s an interesting idea about Hollywood actors who’ve elected against cosmetic surgery, or had it without the desired career boost. Movie standards are, if anything, far more stringent than most marriage-minded men when it comes to requiring beauty; whereas in real life, men and women alike know what Ideal Beauty looks like, but they usually *seek* a partner with looks equivalent to their own, Hollywood is catering to fantasy and therefore is a lot less willing to compromise.  

So back to your question.  I think in Streisand’s case she was famed and beloved as a singer before her movies, which gave her an in. Not sure about Hutton and Grey. I would point out, though, that Hutton and Grey were both beautiful, both symmetrical—just without being totally conventional about it. ‘Butterface’ http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/butterface.html is about a lack of proportion and symmetry rather than the presence of conventional beauty.

Which brings up a point I’ve been thinking about. It was clear to me that plastic surgery could help Grace. But most of the flaws people consider fixing are noticeable mostly to oneself, and aren’t deal-breakers for the world at large. Do those folks really need surgery?

I received a letter recently, for instance, from a woman who wants liposuction because her waist is not exactly 30% smaller than her hips. Yet the .7 WHR (waist-hip ratio) is merely the ideal, the maximally beautiful—it does not follow that a woman with slightly less hourglass proportions is going to have any more trouble attracting a mate than most people do. Similarly, if you’re going to appear naked in a magazine, it’ll help to have symmetrical, evenly matched breasts and/or a good airbrush artist; otherwise, though, most women have one boob larger than the other, and it’s not stopping them from finding true love. (Note: ‘Boob’ is not clinical jargon.)

Finally, you’re right, the beauty bias cuts across all of life, or at least all of life that’s been studied so far. These findings aren’t just correlational—they’re experimental, yielding cause-effect. Beauty *causes* better outcomes.

To wit, your example of justice. There’s an entire experimental area in social psychology devoted only to legal matters. Repeated experiments find that when you expose one randomly-assigned jury to a plain defendant, and another to a good-looking defendant, the cuter criminal is: 
—less likely to be found guilty
—less likely to receive jail time
—more likely to get the harsher sentence—including the death penalty.

Justice is not blind.

So anytime someone pooh-poohs plastic surgery, or claims that looks don’t matter, mine own eyes glaze over. Looks matter. And perhaps only the great-looking could fail to see it.

From Tom: —What this man looks for in Beauty (It needn’t be ideal)—

One man’s perspective - it’s important for a woman considering facial plastic surgery to keep some caveats in mind. These are my opinions:

— Every man may be different in what he prefers or finds irresistible. But there are certainly some basics. (I’ll get to ‘em, I think).

— If there are a preponderance of good facial features, and the one unusual feature isn’t *too* unusual … leave it alone. If a man smiles when he gazes into your face and doesn’t avert his eyes, you are *fine*, just leave yourself be. Think Jennifer Grey, who was awesomely pretty *and* unique pre-work.

— Smoother, tighter, puffier is *not* usually better. Sweet Baby Jesus save us from the Meg Ryan lips and the Botox faces.

— I recently joined Match.com as a means of seeing who’s available in my area, and seeing how *my* profile played with women (now that’s another story). But I am clearly screening out “un-pretty” women in favor of “pretty” women when I respond automatically to the profiles I see. The only written info that even matters is when they are either un-intelligent or purposely rude.

What makes a woman’s face pretty? Her smile. Yes, symmetry. Big bright eyes. Lips that are not too little, not too big. Rounded contours - doesn’t have a “mannish” appearance (I’ve seen some of those and they scare me, sorry). A haircut that is stylish.  

And then somehow I always end up looking at her chest ;-)

Duana’s response: —Making the unusual beautiful; and ethnicity and the politics of nose jobs—

Tom, thank you for a man’s perspective. From my own research-delving and feminine points of view, I agree with everything you said.

I particularly like your position that there are some individual differences in what a particular man—or woman— will prefer. After all, everyone can experience someone who is widely acknowledged to be gorgeous but who is not our personal cup o’ chai. I could look at Liv Tyler ‘til my eyes fell out, while acknowledging that other, similarly-gorgeous faces do little for me.

Most research shows that most of us, most of the time, find the most beautiful person to be the person with the facial aspects representing the average of what you’d get if you could mathematically calculate typical features.  But moving on with the Liv Tyler thing, that particular actress has some features that are a bit larger than most people’s, and in that sense the features aren’t perfectly average.

Which brings us to another of your points I appreciate: Just because a feature is not perfectly ‘normal’ doesn’t mean it requires plastic surgery. Grey’s nose was good as-was. Tyler’s lips are luscious. Just because their features are unusual doesn’t make them un-lovely. Indeed, those very features can be what makes them distinctive and appealing.

Which brings me to something that has cropped up in my private mail from Wise Readers: ethnicity and the politics of nose jobs.

I’ve received some notes from black women who’ve asked me *not* to publish their letters because they feared reprisals from those who might take their desire for rhinoplasty as a condemnation of the wider noses typical among African Americans. They wanted me to know that they wanted a nose-job, not as a means of erasing their racial and ethnic heritage, but because their particular nose was not proportionate to their particular face.

Literally and figuratively, that seems fair enough to me. My personal taste is offended by an ethos that would say we all need to look just alike, or that one race’s standard of beauty should be the standard for all. I likewise oppose pressuring people not to have surgery because it might offend members of their own group. Just my two cents~no research I’ve looked into on that.

From Undisclosed: —Rhinoplasty gone right—

I hope Grace takes your advice.  My roommate in college…had a nose job the summer after our freshman year. Her case was similar to Grace’s – excellent package, except a huge, crooked nose threw the whole equation off. After the nose job, I could tell she felt better about herself and less self-conscious. That one piece of editing transformed her whole appearance. Some months after the nose job (a gift from her mother), my roommate attracted the serious intentions of one Mr. Greenberg. Eventually, she married into the very wealthy Greenberg family… Though I lost contact with her, I hope she lived happily ever after.

Duana’s response: —The Beautiful really are more self-confident—and heightened confidence should be an outcome of plastic surgery—

Undisclosed, thank you for that story. As it happens, more beautiful people are often a bit more confident in reality. Having been treated better all of their lives may translate into social skills that are a bit smoother, the academic thinking goes.  And as most of us probably know even without the research, self-confidence is sexy.  

So looking better and finding that the world is more responsive and desirous of one, post-op, aren’t the only outcomes we’d hope for from cosmetic surgery. We’d also want the newly-prettier to develop more self-confidence. I’m happy for your former roommate that she got all these results!

Cheers,

Duana

Do you have a question for Duana?  Write to her at Duana@LoveScienceMedia.com

All material copyrighted by Duana C. Welch, Ph.D., and LoveScience Media, 2012

Related LoveScience articles:

 Plastic Surgery (the article to which this Q&A refers): http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/plastic-surgery-are-you-off-your-head.html

 Butterface: why some men pick one kind of physical type to have a fling with~another to make a lifetime with  http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/butterface.html

 Butterface Q&A: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/qa-from-butterface.html

 Why men say they hate makeup, and why women should wear it anyway: http://rachelrabbitwhite.com/do-men-prefer-women-with-make-up/

 Women as sex objects: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/women-as-sex-objects-youth-beauty-and-beating-the-odds.html

The author wishes to thank the following scientists and sources:

 Thanks to David Myers for the synopsis of Michael Kalick’s Harvard University dissertation, “Plastic surgery, physical appearance, and person perception,” which is unpublished.

 Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Hatfield (formerly Walster), for identifying the physical attractiveness stereotype (the stereotype that what is beautiful is good and that beautiful people are over-all better people), and launching research on its extent in the 1970’s. 

 Margaret Clifford and Elaine Hatfield (Clifford and Walster, 1973) for an experiment showing that 5^th-grade teachers believe an attractive child more intelligent and successful in school than a less-attractive child with an identical biography.  

Comments

[Mocha's Mom]

Can't remember the details of the study, wish I could find it but here it is: birdy-type-scientists were studying birds that can only successfully rear one chick per year. If more eggs than that were laid, the birds would automatically pick the biggest one (big chicks survive best).

Being evil birdy-type-scientists, they decided to paint rocks to look like eggs, but bigger eggs than the birds could ever physically lay.

You guessed it: the birds picked the big painted rocks over actual eggs. Damn those evil bird sciencey guys.

So basically, humans will also choose the big painted rock over anything workable -- there are guys out there who will reject attractive, available women because they want a 10, and won't settle for an 8 or 9.

For a pointed example, you could check out "Our Valued Customers" (things overheard while working in a comic book store):

http://ourvaluedcustomers.blogspot.com/2012/01/regarding-cover-of-recent-catwoman.html

[Duana C. Welch, Ph.D.]

Dear Mocha's Mom,

Excellent evil science example. Since you cited a scientist you can't recall at the moment, may I also? Thank you.

Other evil birdie-scientist types manipulated the perceived attractiveness of finches. The females usually go for the male (zebra finch, I seem to recall) with the most colorful legs. Turned out that when highly desirable males were made to appear to be less desirable in the leg luster department, their once-faithful mates became faithless wenches who cavorted with other males.

And by 'cavorted', I mean 'fornicated'.

Other scientists manipulated male peacocks' sexually appealing features (large eye spots and bright color); they cut off the eye spots (gasp!) of the endowed males, and created fake eye spots on those less-endowed. Sure enough, females began going for guys they had formerly overlooked, and snubbed the once-desired. When these scientists then forced matings (again--gasp!) between females and the truly-plainer males, the resulting offspring were much less hardy; many more died than when females had been permitted to select high-status males.

So the beauty bias extends even beyond our own species. Many scientists suspect this bias has something to do with the twin evolved psych imperatives to survive and reproduce. The thinking --and the data--goes that those people with more symmetrical features typically have a stronger immune system, and are less likely to have infectious disease. As we've seen, pretty people are also given large social advantages, so mating with a Lovely One can confer status (and access to resources) to the person who captivates such an individual.

All around, it isn't fair. But to loosely quote anthropologist Helen Fisher, Love isn't about fairness--it's about winning. Today, we can, regardless of the hand we were dealt, enhance it a bit. Is that fair?

Is anything?

Something to think about.

Cheers,
Duana