Beauty Bias Emerges

A new book by law professor Deborah Rhode, The Beauty Bias, discusses appearance-based discrimination and the law. Michigan and six locales have laws against appearance discrimination, and the result has been not a flood of frivolous litigation but a few suits in egregious cases. Michigan averages 30 complaints per year, with about one per year going to court; and it certainly seems reasonable that, for example, a nursing student should not be kicked out of school for being obese. Abercrombie & Fitch faced a class action (focused mainly on race and gender discrimination) after managers held weekly reviews to ogle surveillance photos of new entry-level retail employees and fire the ones who didn't look like what they wanted. From the 1970s through the 1990s, appearance discrimination was treated largely as an aspect of sexism or racism, but in the past ten years the discussion has changed to include obesity and body-image issues.

“Just one look,” New York Times Review of Books, 5/23/10;
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/05/appearance_dis...