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，在四大会计师事务所其中的一家，我向一屋子的新员工做了一次演讲。在扫视这群听众时，我发现了一个奇怪的现象。在面对着我的80张面孔中，没有一张是难看的。没有一张脸长满痘痘。没有一张脸不是五官端正的。每一张脸都算得上好看。

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.

这不是《时尚》杂志(Vogue)或时尚零售连锁店Abercrombie & Fitch。这些人是被聘来审计公司账目的，这项工作需要对公认会计准则(GAAP) ——而非好看的高颧骨——拥有不同寻常的热情。然而，这一屋子的会计师都达到了普通人群中很大一部分人无法达到的颜值标准。

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.

这家公司并非特例。如果我回忆一下自己孩子的朋友里那些在会计师事务所、银行、咨询公司和律师行找到工作的年轻人，他们的颜值都远高于平均水平。即便在长期被认为是丑人天然归宿的广播领域，也看不到一个长得不好看的人。我正在制作一部广播纪录片，所有制作人都长相出众，甚至整天与按钮打交道的音效师都长得非常养眼。

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.

不仅是最具竞争力的工作对难看的人关上了大门，上流社会还把“ugly（丑）”这个单词变成了禁忌。最终，这个u开头的单词将被视为同那个n开头的词(nigger)一样不礼貌，但现在，我要用一下这个单词，以说明一个观点。没人会说别人丑。他们只是拒绝雇用他们。

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.

我们不再搞种族或性别歧视，但仍摆脱不了严重以貌取人。我刚刚做了一项在线测试——根据人们面部的细微差别判断他们是否诚实、出众和有能力——结果证明我以貌取人的程度跟普通人一样，也就是严重以貌取人。

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.

招聘人员和经理们如此看重颜值，以至于调查发现，颜值高的人收入要比颜值低的人高10%左右；而长相威严的首席执行官所领导的公司事实上最赚钱。

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，长得丑有时也可以成为一种优势——如果你打算抢劫银行，那么看起来有点吓人会更好。长得不好看也可以帮你战胜一些颜值高的人而获得一份工作，但只有在负责招聘的人将你视为竞争对手的时候。两种情况都不值得欢呼。

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.

虽然这些研究并未证明以貌取人现象正日益严重，但我的双眼告诉我恰恰如此。部分原因可能是我已经56岁，在我看来任何20多岁的年轻人都很好看。但我刚刚在看1982年我在摩根大通(JPMorgan)的同批培训生们的旧照，虽然我们看起来都非常年轻，但并非全都好看。其中有一些长相极为出众的，但多数都长相普通，还有一些挺不好看。

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.

会计师变得越来越好看的另一个可能的原因是，随着人们变得富裕而且更加注重打扮，整个世界都在变得更加养眼。但是，如果你早晨去坐地铁，看看通勤的上班族，你很快会发现事实并非如此。依然有很多长相难看的人，但他们在哪里工作？不在伦敦金融城(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.

我们在互联网时代变得越来越看重颜值，这从某种角度看很奇怪，因为我们现在更多地发送电子邮件，而不是与人见面。然而，从另一些角度来看，互联网让情况变得更糟。我刚刚收到了一位面试对象的详细信息，我做了一件自己经常干的事——在谷歌图片(Google Images)上查看他的照片，然后我看到了分得很开的眼睛和突出的下巴。我的偏见立刻形成——我甚至还没有亲眼见过他本人。

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.

为了避免以貌取人，联合利华(Unilever)和微软(Microsoft)正在墨西哥进行一项尝试：前三分钟，面试官隔着屏障面试应聘者，以免关键的第一印象受到长相干扰。我认为这些做法以后肯定会得到推广；我猜，到那时以貌取人肯定将是非法的。

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.

同时，一家公司雇用的难看的人的数量，可以在很大程度上说明这是一家怎样的公司。如果它只招聘长相出众的人，这不仅是可怕的，它还错过一群潜在的优秀人才——这意味着这家公司的业绩必定会不及业内平均水平。

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.

在构思这篇专栏时，我一直在密切地打量我的同事，我相信他们不会介意我这么说：在《金融时报》，几乎没有任何以貌取人的迹象。

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.

如果你审视一遍专栏作家的署名照片（从特别赏心悦目到一点也不好看的都有），我想你会同意，由此生成的钟形曲线与全国人口相貌分布相匹配。我可以记起许多署名照片整体上更加好看的报纸，但它们的评论文章水平比我们的要低得多。这两个事实之间肯定不无联系。