Yale's Kelly Brownell and Rebecca Puhl and Harvard's Nancy Etcoff have each reviewed hundreds of studies on the impact of appearance. Men get a bump for height, women are favored if they have hourglass figures, and racial minorities get points for light skin color, European facial characteristics and conventionally "white" hairstyles. A number of researchers have independently found that, when people are asked to rate an individual's attractiveness, their responses are quite consistent, even across race, sex, age, class and cultural background.įacial symmetry and unblemished skin are universally admired. Conventional wisdom holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but most beholders tend to agree on what is beautiful. And it isn't just weight that's at issue it's appearance overall.Īccording to a national poll by the Employment Law Alliance in 2005, 16 percent of workers reported being victims of appearance discrimination more generally - a figure comparable to the percentage who in other surveys say they have experienced sex or race discrimination. In a survey by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, 62 percent of its overweight female members and 42 percent of its overweight male members said they had been turned down for a job because of their weight. " But Portnick was both: She worked out six days a week, taught back-to-back classes and had no shortage of willing students. Jazzercise explained that its image demanded instructors who are "fit" and "toned. ) And in California in 2001, Jennifer Portnick, a 240-pound aerobics instructor, was denied a franchise by Jazzercise, a national fitness chain. (Unless, the waitress noted, they have breast implants, which the casino happily accommodated with paid medical leave and a bigger bustier. "Borgata babes don't go up in size," she was told. When the waitress, whose contract required her to keep an "an hourglass figure" that was "height and weight appropriate," requested a larger uniform, she was turned down. Order custom essay Why Looks Are the Last Bastion of Discrimination In New Jersey in 2005, one of the Borgata Hotel Casino's "Borgata babe" cocktail waitresses went from a Size 4 to a Size 6 because of a thyroid condition. " He did not perform any agility tests to determine whether she was, as the company would later claim, unfit to evacuate the bus in the event of an accident. In Texas in 1994, an obese woman was rejected for a job as a bus driver when a company doctor assumed she was not up to the task after watching her, in his words, "waddling down the hall. We all know that appearance matters, but the price of prejudice can be steeper than we often assume. Across the rest of the country, looks are the last bastion of acceptable bigotry. Yet bias based on appearance remains perfectly permissible in all but one state and six cities and counties. Over the past half-century, the United States has expanded protections against discrimination to include race, religion, sex, age, disability and, in a growing number of jurisdictions, sexual orientation. " Although the government is no longer in the business of enforcing such discrimination, it still allows businesses, schools and other organizations to indulge their own prejudices. expose himself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 for each offense. A Chicago ordinance was typical: "Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting subject. Why looks are the last bastion of discrimination In the 19th century, many American cities banned public appearances by "unsightly" individuals.
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