Why Looks Are The Last Bastion Of Discrimination Summary

In Steven Greenhouse’s article “Going for the Look, but Risking Discrimination”, he expresses the experiences of a striking blonde girl and her specific encounters with employers of retail stores. She indeed is beautiful, striking, gorgeous, and absolutely perfect. Who could ever miss a chance to hire such a remarkable and flawless brand representer. In fact, many store employers are desperately in search of these types of people to help advertise themselves and their businesses. Although Marshal Cohen’s argument in his excerpt seems legitimate, it is actually flawed because having the looks can only take an individual so far.

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

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,

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

Today’s jobseeker has tough competition. In our text book readings “Judging by the Cover” (657-658), Bonny Gainley begins the argument of the paper by stating that job seekers must be careful when they make personal choices that initially will affect their chances of entering the workplace. People have a need to be accepted by others just the way they are, in the same way people continue to say, “you can’t judge a book by its cover”, yet people do based solely on their personal appearances. That goes for businesses as well, “[t]he bottom line is that businesses exist to make money. Whether it seems fair or not, most employers do care about the personal appearances of the people they hire because those people represent the business to its customers”.

People are judged for their appearance all over the world, every day. People with brown, ragged clothes are assumed to be less intelligent, or homeless. People with long hair are assumed to be female. There are many stereotypes that limit the social actions of many people, and it is not just in real life. Rodman Philbrick shows that these stereotypes are not always true in the book “Freak The Mighty” in the form of Maxwell Cane, Kevin, Loretta, and Iggy Lee. All of those characters are misjudged by others, and in some cases, even by themselves. The message that your appearance does not determine who you are is very important, and applies to everyone everywhere.

(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

“Judging by the Cover,” is an essay written in 2003 by Bonny Gainley who is a consultant, speaker, and author. It originally appeared in an opinion column in a Colorado newspaper. Although non-discriminatory, she believes that people project messages about themselves with their appearance. This essay seems to be intended for recent graduates and young job seekers. The main point that she tries to explain to the reader is that even though our family and friends may accept us for who we are, employers may not.

Despite the laws and protections that have been established, workplace discrimination is still reported as a common occurrence in the U.S (Triana, Jayasinghe, & Pieper, 2015). The subsequent sections will examine a case of workplace discrimination as described by Monica Harwell, an African-American woman working for Con Edison, in New York. A consequent discussion of Monica’s account of discrimination evaluates the case in terms of

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)

Overall people perceived as beautiful have more job opportunities as well as a higher chance for advancement in their carriers. A study was conducted by the University of North Carolina at Pembroke on the topic of the relationship between attractiveness of professors and the perceived quality of their teaching. What the study found out was a strong relationship between the two – “results indicated that as hotness ratings increased, so did ratings on overall quality, clarity, and helpfulness. Additionally, further analysis indicated that the greater the percentage of hotness ratings to overall ratings, the more likely that students rated the professors favorably.” Moreover research shows that attractive people perform better when interviewed. An interesting fact is

The article “Beauty and the Labor Market” by Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jeff E. Biddle examines the economics of discrimination in the labour market based on looks and the relationship that exists between beauty and labour market earnings. Analyzing, results from several studies, data from various empirical research and surveys; the article identifies the source of earnings differentials related to looks in six distinct and detailed sections.

Jefferies was successful in his pursuit and as a result, his exclusionary sentiment permeated the workplace culture of the organization at every level; from the sprawling 300-acre headquarters in the woods of Ohio to each individual retail outlet. At the heart of this culture was the “Looks Policy”, an unforgiving guide to how employees should present themselves at work. This policy governed every aspect of an employee’s appearance from the number of times they rolled the cuffs of their jeans to the tone of their skin, which was preferably ‘sun kissed’. Not only did this policy contribute to a negative work environment where employees felt they were constantly being evaluated on the basis of their physical attributes alone, but it also led to human rights violations wherein job applicants were denied employment on the basis of their race and/or religion. In a 2004 class action lawsuit filed against the retail giant, several thousands of former A&F employees alleged the company discriminated against African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans in its hiring practices as well as its advertisements. The claimants also purported that non-white employees were frequently relegated to the back-of-store tasks where they would not be visible to store patrons. A&F settled the lawsuit out of