Fit to serve
貌而美则仕

Looks can win votes—but being too pretty can lose them
长相可以争取选票——但太漂亮了可能适得其反

NAMED last week as his party's candidate for the French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy faces an opponent, Ségolène Royal, who has the press drooling[1]. “Dazzling” and “radiant”, she has been likened to a work of art (“Mona Lisa”) and a mythological figure (a “siren”).

Nicolas Sarkozy上周被其所在政党提名为法国总统候选人。他的对手是Ségolène Royal，法国媒体对她“令人目眩神迷”和“亮丽逼人”的美貌不吝溢美之词，还把她比作是蒙娜•丽莎和希腊女神。

Perhaps Mr Sarkozy should pay a visit to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The city's former mayor, Bob Corker, faced a similar problem in his Senate race last November. He prevailed against a congressman, Harold Ford junior, who was once counted among the 50 “most beautiful” people on Washington's Capitol Hill. （1）In response, Mr Corker hurled one of the strangest insults in campaign history. He accused Mr Ford of being “an attractive young man”.

也许Sarkozy应该去造访一下田纳西的扎塔努加市。该市前任市长Bob Corker在去年11月角逐参议院席位时也遇到了同样的问题。他的对手是曾被评为美国国会山“最美50人”之一的众议员小Harold Ford。为了击败Ford，Corker找到了一个堪称美国竞选史上最奇怪的理由攻击他，指责福特是“一个迷人的小青年”。最终Corker取得了胜利。

“This is not a beauty pageant[2],” Ms Royal's detractors are fond of saying. But what makes them so sure? （2）The days are gone when a person would “vote for a pig if his party put one up,” as one British voter put it in the 1950s. Today, politicians must be well-groomed animals, selling their personalities not their parties. Looks can have an especially powerful influence on the minority of floating voters who determine election results, says Linda Bilmes, a professor of government at America's Harvard University.

Royal的对头们总爱说：“这不是选美。”可他们凭什么这么肯定？上世纪50年代英国一选民说，“如果政党推举一头猪参选，我们就投票给这头猪。”但那个年代已经过去了，今天的政客们要打扮得衣冠楚楚才行，他们推销的不是个人形象而是他们的政党。哈佛大学政治学教授Linda Bilmes认为，对于那些能够左右选举结果的少数摇摆不定的选民而言，候选人的外貌能够产生特别大的影响力。

In Ecuador, for example, Rafael Correa won the presidency last year with headline-friendly promises and camera-friendly looks. His “party” was an afterthought[3]. In India, political parties often seem like shapeless nebulae[4] illuminated by star candidates. The southern state of Tamil Nadu was the first to elect a film star as its chief minister. After his death in 1987, the position fell to two former actresses—his third wife and the inimitable Jayalalitha Jayaram, who rose to screen-stardom, according to one fans' website, “because of the frenzy for blond skin”.

比如说，Rafael Correa去年就是凭借口号喊得震天响和长相“具有亲和力”当上了厄瓜多尔总统，选民们压根儿没管他是哪个“政党”的人。印度各政党常常也是明星云集，光芒四射。南部Tamil Nadu邦是第一个选举电影明星作为领导人的邦。1987年这位明星死后，两位前女演员又先后坐上了他的位置——一个是他的第三任妻子，另一个是绝代佳人Jayalalitha Jayaram。某影迷网站说，她能一跃成为电影明星，全拜人们对棕黄色皮肤的狂热迷恋所赐。

It is tempting to try to prove that good looks win votes, and many academics have tried. （3）The difficulty is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you cannot behold a politician's face without a veil of extraneous prejudice getting in the way. Does George Bush possess a disarming grin, or a facetious[5] smirk[6]? It's hard to find anyone who can look at the president without assessing him politically as well as physically.

美貌可以争取选票，许多人都这么认为，很多专业人士也纷纷尝试证明这一点。但其中的问题在于，美貌与否是选民的个人看法，而且选民们不可能排除政治因素来评判一个政客的长相。George Bush的笑，是可亲的露齿而笑，还是滑稽的傻笑呢？就总统而言，人们是不可能撇开政治因素单纯地去评价其外表的。

Such difficulties do not apply to Jyrki Kasvi. This fine-looking but little known fellow has represented the Uusimaa constituency in Finland's parliament since 2003. He was one of thousands of Finnish candidates whose looks were evaluated, on a scale of one to five, in one of the biggest-ever studies of beauty in politics, undertaken last year by three economists in Sweden and Finland. The candidates' campaign photographs were rated by more than 2,000 non-Finns. Unclouded by politics (none of the candidates was recognised) the scorers showed a surprising amount of cross-cultural consensus—although the French were as usual notably harsh judges.

Jyrki Kasvi不存在这个问题。2003年来，此君一直是Uusimaa选区推举给芬兰议会的候选人，长得好看，但没什么名气。去年三位经济学家在瑞典和芬兰就美貌与政治的关系开展了一项研究，此项规模空前的研究挑选了数千名芬兰政治候选人，请2000多名外国人参照候选人的参选照片，按照1到5对他们的相貌进行了打分。Kavski就是其中一位接受打分的人。由于打分人都不认识这些候选人，因此他们的评分没有受到政治因素影响。结果发现，打分人虽然文化背景不同，但对于相貌的评价却表现出惊人的一致性，只是法国人对美貌的界定还是一贯的挑剔。

Did good looks really go together with electoral success? Incumbents could get by without them, the study found. But for newcomers, physical appeal might make all the difference: among the women, 65% of successful candidates were more beautiful than the average non-incumbent. For men, the share was 57%. A handsome man (ie, a perfect five) enjoys an edge over an ugly rival (ie, someone scoring only one) worth 6-8% of the vote. For the best-looking women, this edge is worth as much as ten percentage points.

漂亮的长相当真能为成功获选助一臂之力吗？研究发现，在职者没有漂亮的长相也会赢得选举，但对于初涉政坛的人而言，外貌是否具有吸引力有可能会决定一切：就女性候选人来说，65%的当选者拥有超过普通水准的美貌，在男性候选人中，这个比例是57%。英俊的男候选人（也就是得满分5分的人）所得的选票要比丑陋的对手（也就是有些仅得到1分的人）多6%到8%，而对于美貌出众的女性候选人而言，多得的选票则要高达10%。

Not everyone looks good in the same way, of course. Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin triumphed in 2004 over an opponent ten years younger and better-looking. What let his opponent down, according to Leslie Zebrowitz, a psychologist at Brandeis University and Joann Montepare of Emerson College, was his “neotenous[7] facial anatomy” or, to put it more simply, his “babyface”. （4）Apparently, men blessed with round faces, big eyes, small noses and high foreheads are perceived as less competent, whatever their age. 

当然，每个人的美貌在选民们看来是不一样的。2004年，威斯康辛州参议员拉斯•费恩格德战胜了一个比他小10岁而且比他更帅气的对手。布兰德斯大学心理学家莱斯利•泽布罗维茨和埃默森学院的乔安•蒙特帕里认为，费恩格德的对手之所以落败，是因为他“稚气未脱的面部特征”，或者说的直接一点就是“他长了一副娃娃脸”。很显然，圆脸、大眼睛、小鼻子、高额头的男性候选人不管年龄多大，都会给选民留下能力不足的感觉。

All this looks bad for Britain's Conservatives and their neotenous leader, David Cameron. But in Tennessee, Mr Corker's “attractive” rival was young, not baby-faced. So why did Mr Corker focus so hard on looks? （5）“It was meant to demean,” says Tom Lee, who advised Mr Ford's campaign. He likens it to calling a sportsman an “athlete”, implying that unlike his rivals, he does not need to work very hard for success.

这对英国保守党人和他们“稚气未脱”的领导人大卫•卡梅隆而言，可不是什么好事。不过在田纳西州，考克那位“迷人”的对手虽然年轻，但也没有长着一副娃娃脸，那考克为何还非要拿长相说事呢？福特竞选顾问汤姆•李说：“考克这是想故意贬低对手身份。”李认为，考克这么做就好比称呼一名“全能运动员（sportsman）”为“田径运动员（athlete）”一样，暗示自己不用太费劲就可以胜利，而他的对手则不然。

Mr Lee doubts this tactic affected the outcome. What voters want in their politicians, he s

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