Fred Turner knows, of course, that he is a handsome, athletic-looking young man, the type that directors employ to battle carnivorous vegetables. It would be going too far to say that he has never derived any satisfaction from this fact, but he has often wished that his appearance was less striking. He has the features, and the physique, of an Edwardian hero: classically sculptured, over-finished, like the men in Charles Dana Gibson’s drawings. If he had lived before World War II, he might have been more grateful for his looks; but since then it has not been fashionable for Anglo-Saxon men to be handsome in this style unless they are homosexual. For modern straight tastes his chin is too firmly rounded and cleft, his carriage too erect, his hair too wavy, and his eyelashes much too long.

Were Fred in fact an actor his appearance might be an asset. But he has no histrionic ability or ambition; and in his profession beauty is a considerable handicap, as he has been made to realize over the last five years. While he was in school there was no problem. Boys are allowed to be handsome, as long as that is not their only asset, and Fred was an all-round achiever: energetic, outgoing, good at both lessons and games; the sort of child teachers naturally favor. Later he became the kind of prep-school boy who is elected class president and the kind of undergraduate and graduate student who is described in letters of recommendation as “incidentally, also a most attractive young man.”

The real disadvantages of Fred’s appearance did not surface until he began to teach. As anyone who has been to college knows, most professors are not especially strong or beautiful; and though they may appreciate or at least forgive these qualities in their students they do not much care for them in their peers. If Fred had been in Theater Arts or Painting and Design, he might not have stood out so from his colleagues or had so much trouble with them. In English, his appearance was held against him: he was suspected, quite unfairly, of being vain, self-centered, unintellectual, and unserious.