Sorry, Charlize Theron, your beauty isn't a disadvantage

Despite what she might think, Charlize Theron is lucky: labelling beauty a burden is a luxury only beautiful people have

Charlize Theron ( Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

Charlize Theron is a ferociously talented actress with a tigress attitude and a healthy bank account. She’s also 5ft 10in tall, with blonde hair, cheekbones as sharp as razors and lithe, Amazonian limbs. It’s hard, really, to feel sorry for her.

But feel sorry for her we must. In an interview with GQ magazine, the Mad Max star claims that being beautiful is a curse. In the interview, Theron says attractive people get turned away first when it comes to serious roles. “How many roles are out there for the gorgeous, gown-wearing 8ft model,” she bemoans. This is, incidentally, the same woman who became a model at 16 – a job in which we must assume her striking good looks were anything but a hindrance.

There’s so much I agree with Theron about, not least that Hollywood is sexist. The South African actress has campaigned tirelessly for equal pay in Hollywood since leaked emailed from the 2014 Sony hacks revealed an enormous salary disparity between men and women. In fact, one condition of Theron’s role in the Snow White and the Huntsman prequel The Huntsman: Winter’s War, the film she is currently promoting, was that she and her male co-star, Chris Hemsworth, were paid the same.

I agree with her, too, that Hollywood is a fickle, hypocritical beast which allows men to grow older and more gorgeous, all the while criticising women for sporting ageing and altered faces.

But – and it pains me to say this, Charlize – you’re very much mistaken if you think being beautiful is anything but an advantage in this superficial world. Life, it’s fair to say, is easier if you are good-looking. Beauty tends to be the very first thing we notice about a person. Before we say hello or shake hands, we clock, and judge, appearances. And people gravitate towards the attractive. It’s human nature; we’re biased towards good-looking people because our hormones tell us they’d make better sexual partners. According to research conducted by the University of Texas and reported in economist Daniel Hamermesh’s book Beauty Pays, good-looking people get more job interviews and are more likely to be hired sooner, paid more and promoted faster than their plainer peers. Pretty people find it easier to get bank loans, too, and often pay lower interest rates than unattractive borrowers. Further research has even shown that better-looking students tend to be considered more intelligent by teachers and are graded accordingly.

Is it any wonder, then, that most gorgeous people float through life with an enviable confidence and assurance not always present in their less-attractive cohorts? I’d argue that labelling beauty a burden is a luxury only beautiful people have. So, for all her hard, admirable work on equal pay for women in Hollywood, ultimately it’s a little galling to hear Theron bemoan her own beauty when there are worst things to be lumbered with. I, too, wish women were taken at more than just face value; admired for their talents and brains instead of just looks. But even then, beauty is anything but a curse. Some perspective, please, Charlize.