Is Good Makeup The Key To Success?

What distinguishes successful women from women who are, well, less than successful? A Harvard professor thinks the answer may be “makeup.” Nancy Etcoff, assistant clinical professor at Harvard, showed 268 men and women high-resolution pictures of female subjects who were photographed in four states: barefaced or made up at levels informally classified as “natural,’’ “professional,’’ and “glamorous.’’ The participants were then asked to judge the women based on a number of characteristics including attractiveness, competence, likeability, and trustworthiness. As Beth Teitell reports in the Boston Globe, observers judged the barefaced women lowest in every instance except for one: the most heavily made up women were seen as less trustworthy. Then, of course, there is the trustworthiness of the study, which was paid for by Procter & Gamble Cosmetics. Read an abstract here.