Not long ago I found myself addressing a room full of newish hires at one of the big four accountancy firms. As I surveyed the crowd I noticed something odd. Among the 80 faces turned towards me, there was not a single ugly one. No one with badly pockmarked skin. No one with displeasingly asymmetric features. Every single face was tolerably easy on the eye.
This wasn’t Vogue or Abercrombie & Fitch. These people had been hired to audit company accounts, a task which requires an unusual enthusiasm for GAAP — not high cheekbones. Yet this roomful of accountants all achieved a minimum standard of looks that a large slice of the general population fails to match.
This firm is not at all unusual. If I think of the friends of my children who have landed jobs in accountancy, banking, consulting and the law, all are of far above average appearance. Even in radio, long supposed to be the natural home of the ugly, there is not a plain person in sight. I am in the process of making a radio documentary and all the producers are gorgeous, and even the sound technicians — who commune with buttons all day — are perfectly agreeable to look at.