Beautiful women sail through life with all the advantages in the world, right? That’s what many of us have been conditioned to believe, but of course, it’s not true. And now there’s research to prove it — when it comes to the workplace, at least. According to a recent study, attractive businesswomen are in fact considered less trustworthy, less truthful and more worthy of being fired than other women.

The researchers, out of Washington State University and the University of Colorado Boulder, call this the “femme fatale effect” — femme fatale being a term for a seductive yet manipulative woman. (Think Kathleen Turner in “Body Heat” or Cersei Lannister in “Game of Thrones.”)

“Highly attractive women can be perceived as dangerous,” said Leah Sheppard, an assistant professor at W.S.U. and a lead author of a paper. “That matters when we are assessing things like how much we trust them and whether we believe that what they are saying is truthful.”

The study pushes past the more commonly accepted idea that beautiful women are underestimated at the office to focus on how bias against these women stems from more primal feelings of sexual insecurity, jealousy and fear.

“For women, there are certain contexts in which they don’t seem to benefit from their beauty,” Sheppard said, pointing to evolutionary and social factors.