October 14, 2007 12:07 PM

Lighten up (your hair) if you want to succeed
Posted by Diane Danielsonat 12:07 PM

Elle magazine actually had an interesting article about how beauty standards affect the women who deliver our news.  It starts with the focus on a young reporter who was told to "lighten up," i.e blondify her hair if she wants to move her career forward.

"most of us would be outraged if a boss (any boss, but particularly a man) made such a suggestion, but she accepts - if not exactly embraces - the realities of her industry, one of which is that blond hair just might make her more successful."

Now, I fully expected the article to back away from that sentiment and start recommending hair color products, but the writer, Maggie Bullock, hung in there and had a pretty thorough discussion about the fine line female professionals walk between being pretty enough to be thought intelligent, but not so pretty as to detract.  She even references a study where "smiling" will lose women IQ points, while it raises it for men.  While the focus was on anchorwomen, the article was broad enough to cover all professional women who face this dilemma although in much subtler ways.

Of course, in true women's magazine fashion, the next article that followed was about the benefits of liposuction.