The Beauty Bias : The Injustice Of Appearance In Life And Law

In the essay “Why Looks Are the Last Bastion of Discrimination” by Deborah L. Rhode, she portrays the stereotypes hardships which are faced by certain people. She wants the audience to know how the stereotypes can cause suffering. The way certain people appear can cause people to have certain view point towards them due to their look. Discrimination is generated in people’s minds due to the physical appearance of a person. She wants the people to know that discriminating others because of their race, religion, color, and gender should be stopped. She gives an example in her essay about an obese lady, where the lady is called she not fit for job and

“We all know that appearance matters, but the price of prejudice can be steeper than we often assume” (Washington1.) Published originally in the Washington Post on May 23,2010 by Deborah L. Rhode. Rhode the Professor of law and legal director at Stanford University in her essay “Why Looks Are The Last Bastion Of Discrimination,” argues that an individual's physical appearance is one of the few qualities of their personal identity that other people are legally within their rights to discriminate against. Rhode states her thesis clearly explaining the forthcoming reasons she will offer to uphold her position. Rhode believes that discriminating against individuals based on their appearance is wrong, and is often overlooked in many environments such as the workforce. Many think it is crucial that discrimination on looks is banned in workplaces, schools, and most other organizations.

Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor at Stanford University and author, has written or co-written over twenty-seven books in the genre of “professional responsibility, leadership, and gender,” and published editorials in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Slate. On May 23, 2010, an editorial by Rhode titled, “Why Looks are the Last Bastion of Discrimination,” was published in the Washington Post. This article argues for the need of stricter anti-discrimination laws after proving that the United States’ bias towards more attractive people severely impacts one’s ability to obtain jobs and other opportunities. Rhode follows Toulmin’s model of argument which states that an argument must incorporate data, a claim, warrants, qualifiers,

Why do people now a days discriminate people by colors, eyes, or basically the physical appearance? Generally people say that Asians are smart, blacks are dirty, whites are rich and powerful (soundvisioncom,2015) . Racism is the belief that one race of people are greater than another because of the race they are born into. In other words Racists people judge other people or discriminate them by their race. Nelson Mandela once said (Smhcomau, 2015) “Racism is a human conscience. The idea that any people can be more powerful than another, to the point where those who consider themselves as powerful and treat the rest as sub-human or low ranked people"

In the society we all live in today, where outside beauty is emphasized more than inner beauty, businesses have realized how to utilize that view to their own benefit They have looked at trends and realized that it is profitable to hire those with outer beauty. However, since certain businesses are only hiring certain ethnicities in order to project that image, it has been questioned whether these businesses are discriminating. In the article, Going for the Look, but Risking Discrimination, it says that " hiring attractive people is not necessarily illegal, but discriminating on the basis of age, sex, and ethnicity is." The companies cannot help it that only certain types of people fit their marketing image and their hiring strategies are

(In one study, economists Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh estimated that for lawyers, such prejudice can translate to a pay cut of as much as 12 percent.) When researchers ask people to evaluate written essays, the same material receives lower ratings for ideas, style and creativity when an accompanying photograph shows a less attractive author. Good-looking professors get better course evaluations from students; teachers in turn rate good-looking students as more intelligent. Not even justice is blind. In studies that simulate legal proceedings, unattractive plaintiffs receive lower damage awards. And in a study released this month, Stephen Ceci and Justin Gunnell, two researchers at Cornell University, gave

While it does not seem right, employers do care about our appearance. Jobs exist to make money and right now there is a tough job market. With a lot of people out there looking for jobs, employers can afford to be picky. This is not about human rights and freedom, but about free enterprise.

As I was reading The Beauty Bias, by Deborah L. Rhodes, I came across a statistic that perplexed me, saying the total “annual global investment in grooming” comes to $115 billion (Rhodes, pg. 32). This shocking fact provokes a worrisome question: Why do we, humans, spend so much time, money, and thought on our appearance? As a complex question, there are several equally complex answers. However, the simple answer is that everyone else invests their time and thought into your outer shell, eliciting effort from you to improve what they study - your external image. The concern placed on one’s fashion choice or natural features by society takes away from larger, more pressing issues such as the declining economy, or feeding third-world countries.

We are living in a visual culture. Only now, unlike in the past, we have the ability to access all types of media at the drop of the hat, thus creating a need for instant gratification and a never-ending consumption. But, we have always been a visual society. How else do you explain racism, fat shaming, xenophobia, or other types of visual based prejudice? All of these involve making a “judgment” on how a person looks, or the perception of someone solely for how they appear. As Sam Anderson writes in his article, Letter of Recommendation: Looking Out the Window,

Beauty standards are portrayed everywhere: on magazines, social media, ads, commercials, and even flaunted among peers. While the ideals are supposed to promote health awareness, fitness motivation, and self love, it unfortunately results in many unfavorable consequences. Women are constantly “penalized for not being beautiful and at the same time are stigmatized, even pathologized, for not feeling beautiful, for having low self-esteem, for engaging in behaviors like dieting and excessive exercising, or for having eating disorders” (Johnston and Taylor 954). Beauty standards are unrealistic and unhealthy to pursue, and misinforms the public on what true beauty is. While not all beauty image ideals promote negative feelings and dissatisfaction, many believe that the negative effects far outweighs any positive effects.

People often judge or misperceive others appearances in a less than equal manner before they even know the true nature of the person. Every day we make assumptions by what we can see physically. Even in the supermarkets, we distinguish good products from bad products based on how they look. We are apt to choose good-looking products because they don’t have flaws, cracks, and bruises. Moreover, we assume them to have good qualities and good tastes. Actually, taste doesn’t deal with its looking. However, we bias in favor of assuming human nature. Since people judge human beings based on how they look, it is called prejudice. In fact, prejudice just disadvantage

When I was only a little girl, I had been told that true beauty came from within. Yet as I grew up, I noticed that looks mattered. From their attractiveness, race, age, or gender, anyone’s image was always up for scrutiny. Under those circumstances, I grew up thinking that if people were to judge me based on my appearance, that I should judge them the same way. Though, as I became older, I at some point learned that how a person looked wasn’t always in their range of control. A person simply isn’t born with the choice of picking what they look like, nor are they born with the choice of having a genetic disorder or disease. In that case, I believe that nobody should be defined purely based on what they look like.

Wolf discusses the effect that these standards are having on women in the workplace. A woman’s beauty, or lack of it, can be used against her. In 1986, Mechelle Vinson lost a sexual harassment case. “Vinson was young and ‘beautiful’ and carefully dressed. The district court ruled that her appearance counted against her.” (Wolf 38) “In Hopkins v. Price-Waterhouse, Ms. Hopkins was denied a partnership because she needed to learn to ‘walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely,’ and ‘wear makeup’.” She brought in more business than any other employee. (Wolf 39)

Lookism is a more and more pressing problem for companies and corporations, that strive to create an equal opportunities work space. The definition of lookism is “bias or discrimination against individuals on the basis of appearance, often unconscious.” This discrimination refers to both people who are not perceived as attractive and those who have to deal with the stereotypes connected to being exceptionally good-looking.

The article proposes that there is a positive relationship between beauty and labour market earnings and the impact of beauty is higher for men than women. However, the article fails to answer an important question: is the impact of beauty due to pure discrimination or