Photo credit: http://onlinelaw.wustl.edu

This post is from an interesting conversation I had with a great friend of mine, who also happens to be a strikingly beautiful and undeniably professionally successful Black woman. My friend is a marketing genius, and has made leaps and bounds in her career from the very start. It doesn’t take long to notice how smart my friend (we’ll call her A.) is…Neither does it take much of a mental stretch to notice the absent ring on her all-important finger, or the painfully envious stares she gets when walking down the halls of her company. As many millennial and other professional successful women, A. is single, envied, and way to o often her success up the corporate ladder is attributed to her being no less than a…slut!

Although the myth of attractive people being more successful exists out there, truth is many a beautiful, successful woman is alone. Not only do these women appear unattainable, “un-dateable” and at times plain dangerous to potential partners, but they also are subject to the assumption they didn’t get there on their own…

This is all the more prevalent for women of color, and the perennial distinction between those women who’ve “slept their way up the corporate ladder” and those who’ve done it the “right way”. The underlying notion that women of color are not capable of achieving professional success the traditional way still heavily weighs on mentalities, the media and work statistics.

So does one have to hide their attractiveness to professionally succeed as a woman, especially as a woman of color? Does professional success and physical attractiveness make a lethal combo for women? Or is it time to change perceptions towards women who are making it to the top, and making it well?

The Corporate Sis.