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The New York Times Magazine / September 9, 2001

//There is something banally obvious about beauty, which is why the camera loves it so much. The way all babies can look the same and the way all happy families are happy in the same way, beauty can be utterly boring. Thus the Hollywood fantasy of the beautiful-boring girl being aced by the witty-plain girl. But given the choice, would most people choose a beauty pill or an intelligence pill? Has anyone done a study?

Many great photographers are uncomfortable shooting beauties; others revel in the suspicion that a world with beautiful people is a better place.

The problems of beautiful people are another big Hollywood fantasy, probably because Hollywood is full of beautiful people trying to convince themselves that their beauty is a burden. There have been times when some of the most beautiful Hollywood people have worn eyeglasses without prescriptions, to make their faces project something besides mere aston-Thing loveliness. Most recently, "Legally Blonde" fearlessly explored the intellectual prejudices at Harvard Law School against the beautiful.

But the truth is, it's not bad being beautiful, even if most beautiful people won't admit it. Sara Ziff, the 19-year-old New Yorker whom Jennifer Starr found for us, will admit it. Her beauty gets her tables in hot restaurants without a reservation. It gets off-duty cabs to stop for her. It gets her past the long lines at nightclubs and into VI.P rooms. It gets her discounts on clothes. More important, it got her a modeling agent and a Hollywood agent. While other struggling actors sit at home, it gets her auditions. And recently, it got Sara her first major national modeling campaign.

But beauty does not solve all her problems. It isn't enough to get her a discount on her rent, though she asks for one. When she goes for an audi-tion, it isn't enough to make the guy at the front desk let her use the phone

-even though she's wearing a bikini. (There were a lot of beautiful girls there in bikinis, after all, and only one phone.) And it makes her boyfriend jealous. But one way or another, her beauty affects every transaction, every interaction, every action, not just because of other people's awareness of it, but because of her own. And her willingness to let her beauty work for her.

"It's sort of unchartered territory, talking about it," she says, weighing the pluses and minuses. "This topic sounds so big-headed to discuss. I don't want to come across as arrogant, but it is a reality of my life.

One restaurant offers a 75 percent discount to models from her agency, but only if they eat their meals at the restaurant. In the window. "What the hell, if I get 75 percent off, I'll sit in the window and eat it," she says.

Ziff also gets a lot of unwanted attention, catcalls and gropes and wince-inducing suggestions. Her mother, a lawyer, thinks she should wear a big jacket so she won't be harassed. Her father, a professor, has pronounced himself horrified that she deferred her college education to pursue her career - which "won't get any easier," her agent has warned.

"I've gone in for parts and been told I was too pretty,"

"she says. "But

when it comes down to it, I can't complain. It has worked more in my favor than against me. I wouldn't be seeing any of these casting directors if I didn't look a certain way.

"Doing this acting work is really important to me," she adds. Even if she's already tired of the character descriptions: "Every script says beautiful sexy blonde seductress' or something.//

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The New York Times Magazine / September 2001