Click, click, click! There you go! You capture a sexy photo of yourself in a sensuous outfit and ruffled coiffure and post it online, waiting to be showered with wows and likes from pals. But if you are in your twenty-something in the lookout for a lucrative job offer or already in one, well, you better watch out. That sexy selfie you just posted may not work in your favor after all. For, even if you may be expecting those women around you to simply go green with envy seeing you in a sensuous avatar, it may actually spell doom for your professional life. Post a coy picture looking demure in a decent ensemble and you are likely to get much more kudos from your female colleagues as well as your girlfriends as a competent worker, a pretty damsel and a reliable friend. This truth is not without evidence and before you start taking this lightly, it is worthwhile going through what the study conducted by an ex- psychology professor of University of California depicted.
The Study
In an endeavor to find out how women in both sexual and non-sexualized snaps posted on social media are perceived, Elizabeth Daniels, at present with University of Colorado, conducted a study which was published in a journal titled, “Psychology of Popular Media Culture.” Through the survey Daniels sought to put forth a questionnaire in front of two groups of samples: one comprising 58 young girls aged between 13 and 18 and the other consisting 60 young adult females in the age group of 17 to 25. The questions asked centered around two fictitious profiles of a single young woman Amanda Johnson on Facebook. Both the profiles resembled each other in very way except for the image under the main profile tab. One of the images depicted Amanda attired in a shirt and a pair of jeans along with a scarf wound round her neck. The other profile showed the same woman in a sexy low-cut red-hued outfit which had a slit running from quite high in the thigh down till the bottom of the dress.
Believe it or not, the chaste Amanda in jeans obtained much better scores with relation to looks, social desirability, reliability as a friend and competence in getting anything done with aplomb than the sexier Amanda with the same background and looks. Elizabeth Daniels along with Dr. Eileen Zurbriggen, co-author of the journal addressed the young generations enlightening them on ways to promote themselves on the social media platform in order to grab the best suitable jobs.
Advice for Young Professionals
Daniel’s study clearly shows the utmost requirement of a cultural shift in the society whereby young professionals should be prudent in posting photographs of themselves on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and the likes. For, the prying eyes of top employers are always crawling into social media websites to check out prospective candidates and if they happen to come across a sexy selfie of yours, your chances of getting hired plummet instantly.
So even if you thought that sexy picture of yours in college 10 years back could be dumped in the oblivion in favor of your present image of sobriety in suit, it is time that you listen to your girl friends.
