Dear Young Women in Business,
You’ve asked many and often the secret to success in your career, and I’m here now to tell you the key.
Are you sitting down? Ready?
You need to be a seven out of ten.
You know a Seven. She’s pretty, but not, like, hot.
Good-looking enough to be noticed, but not so good-looking as to be undermined, whether or not Successful Seven’s realize it, their seven-ness has been critical to their rise. And it’s why it’s so important that you, too, focus on it, if you want to do your duty as a modern woman and get on the path to the top.
To put it quite frankly: it’s no good to be a Three.
As a Three, you’ll have trouble from your very first campus career fair. Recruiters will question your “client facing potential” and – if pudge is at issue – your discipline and ability to follow through on hard goals. Assuming you do get in the door, you’ll have your work cut out for you. People pay less attention to Threes than their better-looking peers, you see. And so, to stand out you’ll need to cultivate a big personality or a more assertive tone. Alas, these fixes will be short-lived: come end-of-year review time, you’ll be labeled “unpleasantly aggressive,” “unprofessional-seeming,” and downright “brash.” And there’ll still be that client-facing issue. No matter how perfected your hand-gesture-to-bullet-point-on-slide coordination, something about the way you present just doesn’t land. Perhaps you’d be better in a back-office role? Maybe a regional office where the stakes aren’t so high? In any case, there you’re off the path to the C-Suite. No Forbes’ lists, dear Three, for you.
All of which may rattle you to get prettier, fast. But I’m warning you, don’t go too far!
I know it might seem like gorgeous girls have it easy, but, when it comes to careers in business, they might actually have it worst.
Where, as a Three, you didn’t get enough attention, as a Nine – or God help you, a Ten! - you’ll get far too much. And not the good kind, either. Gossip-giddy office mates will give your work extra scrutiny, eager to prove you only got where you are by flirting or felling some influential man. Meanwhile, men will try it on with you, whether or not you flirt, requiring you to find time and emotional energy to figure out how to make your boundary clear without bruising their egos to the point they leave you out of teams or otherwise valuable work. If you express any frustration on this point, no one will feel sorry for you because, really, whoever felt sorry for a very pretty girl? And, you won’t have any mentors to give guidance on it, either. Successful women are too pragmatic with their time to waste it on women in whom they don’t see futures, and decent men will steer clear of you, lest their attention spark office speculation or the wrath of their wives.
Of course, this whole situation is extremely unlikely. The truth is you probably won’t get hired in the first place. Recruiters will be way too concerned that you’ll be a distraction to the existing team and a lightening rod for sexual harassment situations with out-of-date partners and key clients the company can’t afford to lose. And anyway, let’s be honest, a recruiter will say, if you get her drunk enough at a bar, we all know it’s just a matter of time before she leaves to be a trophy wife anyway. What she means, of course, is that, as a Nine, you’re undoubtedly going to get proposals from rich men who like that, in addition to your good looks and youthful womb, you’ve got the right amount of business training to understand what they do without threatening their self-esteem. They’ll want to make you a well-funded lady who lunches, and obviously you’ll want that, too, because, like, what better option in life is there than that?!? Alas, while you’re off spending your wife allowance, the company is left to reel. Not only have you squandered its investment in your training, by dropping out of the funnel you’ve also set back their progress toward better female representation in upper ranks stats.
So, you see now, surely, that you’re just too high risk. Which isn’t to discourage you from applying, it’s just…have you considered a role in IR?
Ah, I’m sorry: I can tell this is getting uncomfortable.
But don’t worry.
While all this is true, it is also true that there has never been a better time to be a smart and ambitious [western] woman, in business and in life. And it’s not just relative-to-shittier-times-but-still-shitty either: it’s legitimately good.
You just need to be a Seven.
Seven-hood gives you two advantages. First, you look the part. It’s easy to imagine you as a future Mary Barra, Sheryl Sandberg or pre-downfall Elizabeth Holmes because, well…they’re Sevens, too. And second - looks bias being what it is – you have an inherently smoother path than your non-Seven female peers.
As a Seven, recruiters won’t ding you with the concerns they raise about Threes and Nines. If you’re sufficiently articulate, they’ll trust you can learn good client-facing skills. If you show reasonable professionalism, they won’t worry that your sex makes you a distraction to the team. So long as you show sufficient revulsion to the idea of quitting your job to be a full-time mom, they’ll trust you’re in for the long haul. To top it off, they’ll see you as useful to their own department’s goals. You’ll play well on diversity panels and, wearing that corporate branded fleece, you’ll be walking proof of the company’s investment in women they value for more than their looks.
In short, as a Seven, you are the least-risky, biggest-bang-for-the-buck bet a company’s got to fill their girl-quota slots now and in the longer term.
All of which will help you get in the door. Once you’re there, you’ll find a less snarled path than those heretofore described. Your Seven-ish looks will be less likely to draw revulsion, suspicion, jealousy, or dirty thoughts. As such, the level of attention you receive will be left to the merits of your behavior and your work. Assuming you show promise in both regards, higher-ups in the firm will be quick to mentor you. The men because they are eager to prove they’re woke, and the women because they, being also Sevens, see themselves in you.
It won’t be perfect, of course – you are still a woman, after all. But you’ll have help. Women’s Groups, Women’s Networking events, TEDTalks and girl power self-help books are all tailor-suited to the Seven experience because that’s the perspective from which they were writ.
And so, if you work hard and maintain your focus, heed relevant advice and show proper reverence to the women who have gone before, then you, my dear Seven, will be nurtured, groomed, and helped to rise. Pretty soon, you’ll find yourself in top MBA programs, C-Suites and funded founder circles. And from there, magazine covers, proudly proclaiming society’s arrival to an age in which women can be more than their looks. So long, that is, as they have the right one.
Oh, but now I can see you’re Google-image’ing. Your slackened jaw suggests you might see what I mean.
But you have questions!
As well you should!
Let me see if I might pre-empt:
Doesn’t the same trend apply to men?
Absolutely not. Successful men run the gamut from ogre to Ken doll. Google image that one, now, if you need good proof.
Is this a purely American thing?
I think so….?
Does this apply to all industries?
Each industry has its own scale, but it’s the Sevens in each of them who achieve sustainable success.
Have you ever floated this idea before?
Yes. I mentioned it once in an interview in 2015. The next thing I knew a mediocre photo of me was on the cover of the UK’s Saturday Times magazine, headline: MICHELLE MILLER: I’M A SEVEN OUT OF TEN, IS THAT THE KEY TO MY SUCCESS. This, in turn, got me syndication in Australia, two days of tweeting about how hot I am (conclusion: five), and a dating life that occasionally finds me out with a man who’s googled to find said headline and, midway through the date, with a sultry voice and bedroom eyes that suggest he thinks this is a good idea, leans in and says: you know, I think you’re at least a Seven and half. Maybe even an Eight if you tried.
And…. End Scene.
What it did not get me was disagreement. To the contrary, I was and still am bombarded with examples from acquaintances in the corporate world noting examples of the Seven advantage at play.
So, what am I supposed to do, given I’m not a Seven?
Well, conventional women-in-business wisdom would say to change. Do whatever needs to be done to your looks to make sure you’re taken seriously, the same way you’ve done for your voice and your laugh and how frequently you touch your hair. To pre-empt further feedback, you may wish to go ahead and become more seven-ish all around, including your intelligence, charisma and honesty about things people don’t want to hear.
Alternatively, you could recognize that looks have nothing to do with beauty, and focus on it, instead. Beauty is always within you, free to find and express if you dare be so bold. Through it, you’ll find a bigger picture where career success doesn’t matter so much, and you know that you are perfect just how and where you are.
Personally, though, I say screw both of those.
If you really want to succeed in life as well as in business and hold your beauty for the people who earn its worth, it seems to me the thing to cultivate is attractiveness. Which is, so far as I can tell, what happens to a woman when she sees the world with all its warts and, with an amused little laugh, goes right on becoming all that she knows she is.
To that, then, and you –
M x