Wealth makes beauty or beauty makes wealth?

Have you ever seen an extremely ugly rich person?  I'm not talking about people who haven't aged well, I mean imperfect, crooked, unbalanced.  Does money make people look better or do good looking people end up with more money?

If it were up to me, I'd do a big ol' study where participants looked at pictures of both rich and poor and judged them on a scale of ugly to gorgeous and then I would compare that data to the income of each person in the pictures.  Correlation does not imply causation, so it wouldn't prove a damn thing, I'm just curious if my personal interactions with rich and poor are a good sample and have the same correlation.

You see, I was thinking about this because I know a girl whose parents got her cosmetic surgery when she was younger.  I shit you not, she had to be younger than 18, I think.  Both her and brother got some nips and tucks and now there isn't much family resemblance between parents or children.  They're the first people I had ever met that went under the knife for beauty's sake.  I find the idea pretty awful and fascinating.  The mom in this picture always seemed a little vain to me in person, so I wondered if it was her call about the surgical changes.  I can't imagine being a girl and having your mom tell you, "Let's get you fixed."

Of course, that's probably not how any of it happened.  I barely know the family and certainly wouldn't ask for specifics about such a thing.

But back to my original question, are well-off people generally good looking because they can afford to pay to look good?  Plastic surgery certainly isn't cheap and I realize that there are tons of people out there who haven't gone under the knife, but other methods of beautification that are less invasive can still cost a substantial sum.  How about braces?  Not cheap (although much more socially accepted than surgery) and it can't be denied that crooked teeth are generally considered an unattractive feature.  How about dance lessons?  Now these can be cheap in the short term, but if the child sticks with it, it gets progressively more and more expensive.  Dancing gives you a lean figure which is certainly more attractive than the converse.

Next the question that comes to mind is when you look at someone and think they are ugly, do you assume their economical status?  Think back to your school days and think about your unbridled judgment of your classmates.  Who got picked on in your class?  The smelly kid?  The kid that never wore the name brand fads?  Now let's see how we basely judge people now.  Do you zero in on that Coach symbol on their bag or do you make broad assumptions about a person based on their car's make and model?  Do you chuckle to yourself when the disheveled person at the grocery store buys frozen broccoli instead of fresh?  And to tie this all in, have you ever found any of those people attractive?

Of course I haven't even touched upon the fact that rich pretty people seek out other rich pretty people who then make rich pretty babies who grow up to find their rich pretty people.