Putting Your Best Face Forward

Everybody knows that beautiful people have it good, but apparently they’ve got it much better than we thought. According to this recent post on Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog, they get more affection and higher salaries. And sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, folks, but they get better teaching evaluations, too. (If you’ve ever seen that episode of The Family Guy where Peter Griffin gets star treatment and an invitation to join “The Beautiful People’s Club” after having plastic surgery, then you get the picture.)

Given all that, it’s no surprise that the latest advice on landing a good job or getting a leg up at work includes not only polishing your résumé or CV and application materials, getting your recommendation letters in order, improving your job talk and interviewing techniques, but having a little cosmetic work, too. That’s what a longtime adjunct and the pseudonymous author of yesterday’s First Person column, Norma Desmond, did to juice up her search for a tenure-track post. Guess what? She got the job.

How far would you go to get a good job?

Also see a related thread in The Chronicle’s forums.