“LOOKISM” is the preferential treatment given to those who conform to
social standards of beauty. It is gender-neutral affecting both men and women alike.
It tells us that we tend to perceive those judged physically attractive as more
competent and socially graceful that those not so endowed. Because of that, people perceived as "good looking" tend to acquire more friends and have more sex, and more money. According to one economic study, being in the top third in the looks
department delivers a 5 percent bonus while being in the bottom 9 percent
delivers a 7 to 9 percent penalty.
Interestingly, a dental assistant was fired by her dentist boss some years back simply because he judged her to be too
attractive, too tempting to pass unnoticed, and he was worried that if he
didn’t fire her, he would end up having an affair with her.
The dental assistant
sued the dentist for sex discrimination. The district court in Iowa dismissed
the case, contending that the dental assistant was fired not because of her
gender but because she was a threat to the dentist’s marriage. The dental
assistant appealed, only to have the Iowa Supreme Court uphold the lower
court’s decision, maintaining that an employee can be lawfully terminated if
the boss views the employee as an irresistible attraction.
Point: Discrimination based on beauty is rooted in the same sexist
principle as discrimination against the ugly. Both lie in the power of the
male gaze—the fact that men’s estimation of beauty is the defining feature of
the category. Lookism may be gender neutral; the workplace, however, may not be. In
too many workplaces, the glass ceiling is being reinforced by a "looking glass". Think of those model-thin pharmaceutical sales
reps for example, whose job is to persuade physicians to prescribe their
products. It seems that in contemporary society we face the Goldilocks dilemma:
you can’t be too cold or too hot—You have to be “just right.” Beauty is in the
eye of the beholder, but in the workplace, the beholder is endowed with a “Y”
chromosome.
How do you suggest we remedy this?
(For background, see Michael Kimmel, “Fired for Being Beautiful,” The New York Times, July 17, 2013, p. A25)