Shopping to get ahead

usually given higher evaluations — with greater expectations — which in itself is shown to often improve performance.

Pleasing-looking job applicants have also been demonstrated to stand a better chance of securing desirable jobs with higher salaries.

Should they even find themselves in a courtroom, attractive defendants are found guilty less often, and frequently receive less severe sentences.

In general, we seem to believe the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype — an irrational, deeply held belief that appealing-looking people possess other desirable qualities, such as competence, moral virtue and social confidence.

Thanks to advertising, magazines and the endless supply of celebrity pictures, we have grown accustomed to rigid and uniform standards of attractiveness. Seeing “beautiful people” all the time seemingly makes good looks seem real, normal and attainable. Clearly, this has added to the burgeoning demand for breast augmentation, liposuction and tummy tucks, now available widely at lower cost.

Of course one of the dangers of plastic surgery is to become obsessed with it, constantly trying to improve yourself ever further. The celebrated distortions to New York socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein’s face should have scared people away from too much clinical modification. She spent $5 million to become the poster girl for cosmetic surgical disaster.

Michael Jackson endured 10 separate surgeries on his nose, turning himself from a handsome young man into a startlingly unusuallooking one.

Fashion designer Donatella Versace is possibly best known as the owner of the original trout pout, with a wildly oversized upper lip and a nose that has been manipulated so many times it ended up larger than it began.

But for many men and women cosmetic intervention works surprisingly well and is largely imperceptible — it simply helps overcome the inexorable rigours of the age-clock.

As one 60-year-old reported after a full facelift, “I felt 30 again, even if of course all that happened was that I looked younger, fitter and happier. And none of my friends were certain what I had done. Only my doctor and I knew for sure.”

Charles Saatchi’s latest book is Holy Cow!, published by Palazzo Editions