When Appearance Harms

We know how appearance can be misleading. What we fail to acknowledge is how frequently it is harmful.

The person who looks and sounds like a president, a judge, or a doctor is automatically accorded greater deference than one who does not, even though the individual who does not fit the image may be far more competent. I've known managers who have built their entire careers on their personal appearance. When their performance did not match their looks, would-be critics were reluctant to condemn because to do so was to confess that the initial impression was incorrect.

All of that is common knowledge. What is less-frequently acknowledged is when appearance disguises competence. Hunter S. Thompson could not have been as drugged-out as he seemed and yet write as well as he did. The budding rock star soon learns that playing a guitar like Keith Richards takes a lot of work as well as raw talent and that the persona adopted by Mr. Richards is as much a part of the act as Mick's dancing.

This latter approach, in which what is truly difficult is made to seem easy, is deceptive. The struggle does not receive the attention it once did. Unlike the days when Horatio Alger stories emphasized that success is reached more frequently via a stairway than an elevator, today's young see the glamorous results without the pain, sweat, and humiliation that preceded it. Indeed, the media-created celebrity often gets more attention than the achiever. It is fame on the cheap and a harmful fame at that.

If you want to do young people a disservice, tell them that achievement is easy.