How important are looks?

Very well said, OL. RX, I'm demoting you to second smartest person on the planet.
It certainly seems as if someone has been practicing their sarcasm!
And poor Runner X, whose star had shone so brightly, so briefly, has gone supernova. :(

Very well said, OL. RX, I'm demoting you to second smartest person on the planet.
It certainly seems as if someone has been practicing their sarcasm!
And poor Runner X, whose star had shone so brightly, so briefly, has gone supernova. :(

I didn't say I preferred it that way, but at the time, I was just happy to have a job so I could feed me and my husband and put a roof over our heads. There are very few women I've seen, at any level in a corporation, who don't use things to their advantage in various situations. This applies to physical attributes, friendships with higher ups, and yes, "feminine wiles". Was I offended at the time? Yes. Was there anything I could do about it? No.
ULtimately I don't feel I was harassed, discriminated against, or favored. I also didn't ask for it. I think most of the harassment cases today are bullsh!t, and really dilute the true ones. The corporate environment is very different today than it was at that time, over ten years ago. But to say that women don't "work it" today is naive. Just look at how female corporate attire has changed (I'm speaking outside of the labcoat world of course). Additionally, you can certainly get further with kindness and a smile than without. They don't call it "playing the game" for nothing. I'm not saying that it's right; I'm saying it's a sad fact of corporate life.

You weren't coming off that way! And that last bit, contrary to others' beliefs, is exactly what I was saying.

i like pretty girls.

but to me there's a difference between a pretty girl i actually wanna be with and care about, and someone like paris hilton who's supposedly hot, but an air head.

i wouldn't not talk to someone if i didn't think they were attractive. if there's a conversation to be had, why not?

on a side note: some people like art. i like girls. it's what i *do*.

Interesting subject. Timely, too, since my best friend and I were discussing this over dinner last night (and neither one of us is exactly in Brad Pitt territory ourselves).

One of my earliest experiences was in college, when my roomate was a 6-foot, blonde, blue-eyed, Aryan type. The treatment he got anytime we went out in public never ceased to amaze me.

Then, I spent years in the employ of a corporation with a "no average looking women" policy - it was common knowledge among the temp agencies. Qualifcations were secondary, especially for any position that dealt with the senior execs of the company on a regular basis.

But, over the years, I've learned that good looks can indeed be a double-edged sword, and that they aren't the be-all and end-all that I once thought them to be. As elkid points out, physical attractiveness does give you a leg up in a lot of situations, but I've been surprised more than once to find that someone I thought was a knockout had self-esteem issues, and was, in truth, desperately unhappy. I've also known plenty of attractive people who I thought were reprehensible human beings.

Looks are nice, but they aren't the only thing, by any means.

:1:
ps. this is a good topic - the women in the workplace. i haven't figured out what to say about it yet. :wiggle:

:1: ps. this is a good topic - the women in the workplace. i haven't figured out what to say about it yet. :wiggle: I can talk more about this later. As someone who spent nearly 10 years in corporate America, with increasing positions of responsibility, I'd really like to think it was due to brains and not looks. I've gotten really jaded from living down here. It's not like the rest of the US, or even the rest of Florida. If you lived here, you'd know what I mean. People think it's paradise; it's a piranhha pit in reality. It's not what we thought it was coming into it. Although both of us should have known better, anything that sounds too good to be true, is. Period.