Workplaces still value beauty over brains — and this must stop
Beauty and the boss
The Slater and Gordon survey findings affirm that manytrendsthat we describe in our recentbook,Aesthetic Labour, are widespread and continuing despite remote working.
Our book reports over 20 years ofresearchand thinking about this problem. Although ourresearchstarted by focusing on frontline work inhospitalityand retail, the same issue has expanded into a diverserangeof roles includingacademics, traffic wardens, recruitment consultants, interpreters, TV news anchors, and circus acrobats.
Companiesthink that paying greaterattentiontoemployees’appearancewill make them more competitive, while public sector organizations think it will make them more liked. As aresult, they are all becoming ever more prescriptive in tellingemployeeshow they should look, dress and talk.
It happens both to men and women, though more often towomen, and is often tied in more broadly with sexualizing them atwork. For example, while Slater and Gordon found that one-third of men and women had “put up with”commentsabout theirappearanceduringvideo calls,womenwere much likelier to face degrading requests to appear sexier.
When we analyzed ten years ofemployees’ complaints about lookism to the Equal Opportunities Commission inAustralia, we found that the proportion from men was rising across sectors but that two-thirds of complaints were still fromwomen.
Interestingly, theUniversity of Memphis studyfound no correlation for maleacademicsbetween how their looks were perceived and how theirperformancewas rated.
Society’s obsession
Ofcourse, workplaces cannot be divorced fromsocietyin general, and within thebookwe chart the increasing obsession withappearance. This aestheticization of individuals is partly driven by the ever-growing reach and importance of the beauty industry and a huge rise in cosmetic — now increasingly labelled aesthetic — surgery.
Thesetrendsare perhaps understandable given that those deemed to be “attractive” benefit from a “beauty premium” whereby they are more likely to get ajob, more likely to get better pay and more likely to be promoted. Being deemed unattractive or lacking the right dress sense can be reasons to be denied ajob, but they are not illegal.
Some researchershave described an emerging aesthetic economy. Clearly this raises concerns about unfairdiscrimination, but without the legal protection afforded to, say, disabledpeople.
Not only has thistrendcontinued during the pandemic, it might even have been compounded. With the first genuine signs of rising unemploymentreported this month,researchalready suggests a14-fold increasein the number of applicants for some job roles. For example, one restaurant inManchesterhad over1,000 applicantsfor a receptionist position, while the upmarket pub chain All Bar One reported over 500 applicants for a single bar staff role inLiverpool.
Employers are now clearly spoilt for choice when it comes to filling available positions, and those perceived to be better looking will likely have a betterchance. We knowfrom researchby theUniversityof Strathclyde’s Tom Baum and his colleagues that the hospitality industry was precarious and exploitative enough even beforeCOVID-19.
It all suggests that lookism is not going away. If we are to avoid the archaic practices of the old normal permeating the new normal, it is time to rethink what we expect from the workplace of thefuture. One obvious change that could happen is makingdiscriminationon the basis of looks illegal. That would ensure thateveryone, regardless of theirappearance, has equal opportunity in the world ofworkto come.
This article is republished fromThe ConversationbyChristopher WarhurstandDennis Nicksonunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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