一個看顏值的世界 The ugly are vanishing but with them

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.

不久前，在四大會計師事務所其中的一家，我向一屋子的新員工做了一次演講。在掃視這羣聽衆時，我發現了一個奇怪的現象。在面對着我的80張面孔中，沒有一張是難看的。沒有一張臉長滿痘痘。沒有一張臉不是五官端正的。每一張臉都算得上好看。

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.

這不是《時尚》雜誌(Vogue)或時尚零售連鎖店Abercrombie & Fitch。這些人是被聘來審計公司賬目的，這項工作需要對公認會計准則(GAAP) ——而非好看的高顴骨——擁有不同尋常的熱情。然而，這一屋子的會計師都達到了普通人羣中很大一部分人無法達到的顏值標準。

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.

這家公司並非特例。如果我回憶一下自己孩子的朋友裏那些在會計師事務所、銀行、諮詢公司和律師行找到工作的年輕人，他們的顏值都遠高於平均水平。即便在長期被認爲是醜人天然歸宿的廣播領域，也看不到一個長得不好看的人。我正在製作一部廣播紀錄片，所有制作人都長相出衆，甚至整天與按鈕打交道的音效師都長得非常養眼。

Not only have we banished the ugly from most competitive jobs, polite society has banished the word too. In time, the u-word will be deemed as obnoxious as the n-word, but for now I’m using it to make a point. No one calls anyone ugly. They just decline to hire them.

不僅是最具競爭力的工作對難看的人關上了大門，上流社會還把“ugly（醜）”這個單詞變成了禁忌。最終，這個u開頭的單詞將被視爲同那個n開頭的詞(nigger)一樣不禮貌，但現在，我要用一下這個單詞，以說明一個觀點。沒人會說別人醜。他們只是拒絕僱用他們。

We aren’t racist or sexist any more, but are still hopelessly faceist. I’ve just tried an online test — in which you have to judge people to be honest, dominant and competent based on subtle differences in their features — and it turns out I’m just as faceist as the next person. Which is to say, very.

我們不再搞種族或性別歧視，但仍擺脫不了嚴重以貌取人。我剛剛做了一項在線測試——根據人們面部的細微差別判斷他們是否誠實、出衆和有能力——結果證明我以貌取人的程度跟普通人一樣，也就是嚴重以貌取人。

Recruiters and managers are so faceist that the good looking have been found to earn some 10 per cent more than the bad looking; while the CEOs with commanding faces have been shown to run companies that make the fattest profits.

招聘人員和經理們如此看重顏值，以至於調查發現，顏值高的人收入要比顏值低的人高10%左右；而長相威嚴的首席執行官所領導的公司事實上最賺錢。

Other studies establish that being ugly can sometimes be an advantage — if you are trying to rob a bank it is good if you look a bit scary. It can also help you get hired over someone handsome — but only when the person doing the hiring sees you as competition. Neither result is especially cheering.

其他研究表明，長得醜有時也可以成爲一種優勢——如果你打算搶劫銀行，那麼看起來有點嚇人會更好。長得不好看也可以幫你戰勝一些顏值高的人而獲得一份工作，但只有在負責招聘的人將你視爲競爭對手的時候。兩種情況都不值得歡呼。

While the studies don’t prove faceism is getting worse, my eyes tell me it is. This may be partly because my eyes are 56 years old, and to them anyone in their twenties seems beautiful. Yet I’ve just been looking at ancient photographs of my class of trainees at JPMorgan in 1982, and even though we look ridiculously young, we don’t look uniformly lovely. There were a few ravishing beauties, but most of us were of unremarkable appearance and a few were distinctly plain.

雖然這些研究並未證明以貌取人現象正日益嚴重，但我的雙眼告訴我恰恰如此。部分原因可能是我已經56歲，在我看來任何20多歲的年輕人都很好看。但我剛剛在看1982年我在摩根大通(JPMorgan)的同批培訓生們的舊照，雖然我們看起來都非常年輕，但並非全都好看。其中有一些長相極爲出衆的，但多數都長相普通，還有一些挺不好看。

Another possible reason accountants are getting better looking is that the whole world is becoming prettier as it gets richer and more obsessed with grooming. Yet if you go on the Tube in the morning and look at commuters, you quickly see this isn’t true. There are plenty of ugly people — but where do they work? Not in the City. Not at the Big Four firms.

會計師變得越來越好看的另一個可能的原因是，隨着人們變得富裕而且更加註重打扮，整個世界都在變得更加養眼。但是，如果你早晨去坐地鐵，看看通勤的上班族，你很快會發現事實並非如此。依然有很多長相難看的人，但他們在哪裏工作？不在倫敦金融城(City)，也不在四大。

In a way it is odd that we should be becoming more faceist in an internet age in which we send emails rather than meet people. Yet in other ways the internet is making things worse. Just now I was sent details of a person I’m interviewing for something and I did what I always do — looked him up on Google Images and observed his wide apart eyes and strongish jaw. My prejudices were forming — and I hadn’t even clapped eyes on him.

我們在互聯網時代變得越來越看重顏值，這從某種角度看很奇怪，因爲我們現在更多地發送電子郵件，而不是與人見面。然而，從另一些角度來看，互聯網讓情況變得更糟。我剛剛收到了一位面試對象的詳細信息，我做了一件自己經常乾的事——在谷歌圖片(Google Images)上查看他的照片，然後我看到了分得很開的眼睛和突出的下巴。我的偏見立刻形成——我甚至還沒有親眼見過他本人。

To combat this sort of thing, Unilever and Microsoft are engaging in an experiment in Mexico where they interview people behind a screen for the first three minutes, so that vital first impressions are face-free. I bet in time this sort of thing will catch on; I daresay by then faceism will be illegal.

爲了避免以貌取人，聯合利華(Unilever)和微軟(Microsoft)正在墨西哥進行一項嘗試：前三分鐘，面試官隔着屏障面試應聘者，以免關鍵的第一印象受到長相干擾。我認爲這些做法以後肯定會得到推廣；我猜，到那時以貌取人肯定將是非法的。

In the meantime, the number of ugly workers a company employs says a lot about the sort of place it is. If it hires only the attractive, it is not only being horrid, it is missing out on a group of potential stars — meaning underperformance is bound to follow.

同時，一家公司僱用的難看的人的數量，可以在很大程度上說明這是一家怎樣的公司。如果它只招聘長相出衆的人，這不僅是可怕的，它還錯過一羣潛在的優秀人才——這意味着這家公司的業績必定會不及業內平均水平。

In thinking about this column I have been looking closely at my own colleagues and I trust they will not mind if I point out that there is little sign of faceism at play in the Financial Times.

在構思這篇專欄時，我一直在密切地打量我的同事，我相信他們不會介意我這麼說：在《金融時報》，幾乎沒有任何以貌取人的跡象。

If you do an audit of columnists’ byline pictures — which range from the fairly gorgeous to the not-gorgeous at all — I think you will agree that the resulting bell curve matches the national distribution. I can think of plenty of other newspapers where the byline pictures are on average prettier, but then the standard of comment is rather lower. The two facts are surely not unrelated.

如果你審視一遍專欄作家的署名照片（從特別賞心悅目到一點也不好看的都有），我想你會同意，由此生成的鐘形曲線與全國人口相貌分佈相匹配。我可以記起許多署名照片整體上更加好看的報紙，但它們的評論文章水平比我們的要低得多。這兩個事實之間肯定不無聯繫。