Women who turn up to work looking well-groomed earn significantly more money than their less-preened peers, according to a new study.
Previous studies have shown people considered ‘good looking’ make more money, but sociologists Jacyln Wong and Andrew Penner wanted to investigate further.
To see if there was any correlation between wearing makeup and income, they collected data from over 14,000 people and presented the findings in a paper, titled ‘Gender and the Returns to Attractiveness’.
As expected, the results were pretty depressing.
The researchers found that the perceived attractiveness of a women was based entirely on grooming, rather than, you know, facial features or being a nice person.
Women who conformed to societal beauty standards - think wearing makeup, getting a blow dry and having manicured nails - earned more than women who didn’t.
And men? While ‘attractive’ men had similar extra earning power to ‘attractive’ women, they weren’t mainly judged by how much hair gel they were wearing.
Only half of men (as opposed to all of the women in the study) were judged on their attractiveness based on their grooming habits alone, and the relationship between grooming and income was significantly less.
In a nutshell - if women want to just roll out of bed and into the office, they’re far more likely to earn less than men who’ve skipped the hairbrush too.