Make pretty

Today's Financial Times features an article by Emma Hill titled 'Look your best online'. For a scholar - as distinct from what is presumably the intended reader - it is a revealingly thin piece, revealing because it shows what you can get away with in reporting on people choosing the best photos for self-portrayal on social network services such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Hill reports that the Estée Lauder cosmetics group "is one of the first to pick up on" the "new reality" that "online image matters in the business world".

Beth Zurn, senior vice-president of global education and special events, says that at an internal brainstorming session at the company’s headquarters, "everyone agreed they liked being on sites such as Facebook, but the number one concern was finding the right profile photo. Instead of posting a snapshot from last year’s holiday, we all wanted a photo that made us look our best."

Yes, quite ... the Devil Does Prada crowd probably doesn't want to be featured looking like a decaying cabbage (although artfully dishevilled with an Isabella Blow confection might do the trick). Make pretty!

Make money as well. Hill notes that the result of the moment of inspiration about the importance of looking your very best - dear lord - was -

a series of global beauty counter events entitled 'Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile', where consumers were invited to have their make-up done and a professional photo taken. The latter was stored on a USB key which women could take away and upload later.

She goes on to reveal that -

It's fairly straightforward to work out whether a picture is suitable or not for an executive networking site. According to image consultant Jennifer Aston, "It's about the expression, [which] is usually about looking open, not frowning and not looking too humorous. You can smile, but not like the Cheshire cat – we want eye contact and an expression that is alert."

In the finest tradition of high end cosmetics - validation through reference to medical specialists or other experts in lab coats - Hill then introduces clinical psychologist Dr Cecilia d'Felice, who reveals that an open, unfurrowed online gaze is what's needed. I'll remember that next time I'm having my photo taken and contemplate grimacing like The Bride of Frankenstein

The ability to recognise faces is fundamental to survival. We are hard-wired to be able to remember thousands of faces, so what you communicate in your face, and how you represent yourself, is going to have huge impact."

Cue another expert, with an impressively foreign name ...

Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a research psychologist and senior lecturer at Goldsmiths, London, says of the profile picture, "Here, things like trustworthiness, ambition and intelligence are the most important features."

The history of corporate sociopaths and professional conmen/women, most of whom were validated through a firm grip, 'open smile', confident gaze and conformity with conventional ideas of beauty, might lead some observers to ask what we mean by "trustworthiness, ambition and intelligence" in an online snapshot.

Assuming that you don't drool in front of the camera, it seems that your inner beauty [integrity/hoesty/virtue/whatever] can be expressed if you have the necessary credit card. Hill comments that -

Wearing make-up is also a good idea, and, says Zurn, "most women don't wear enough. Although they may not wear that much on a daily basis, in a photo you need to play up your best features."

"The most professional appearance is full day make-up, which may be up to 10 items, but applied in a very light way," says Aston. "If you wear no make-up, you are perceived to be more junior." The best-selling make-up product at the Lauder events was foundation.

A mere ten items!

Thom Woodroofe on the ABC site less reverently deconstructs the fashion choices and images of Australian politicians.

The same issue of the FT features a review of Roger Moorhouse's Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler’s Capital 1939-45 (Bodley Head, 2010), with a para noting -

One of the most famous urban myths about wartime Berlin – that the animals from the zoo escaped during an RAF bombing raid and roamed around the devastated capital – turns out not to be a myth at all. On November 23 1943, the day after a heavy raid, the Charlottenburg resident Josepha von Koskull saw an "exhausted and distraught feral-looking Alsatian" lolloping towards her, which she was about to feed with a bread roll before two uniformed zookeepers warned her that it was actually an escaped wolf. Another resident, Ursula Gebel, recalled how: "The tanks in the aquarium all ran dry, the crocodiles escaped, but like the snakes they froze in the cold November air."