Going For The Look Analysis

“Going for the Look” Employment Discrimination

The cliché “don’t judge a book by its cover” is hopelessly lost on the people of the younger generation in this modern day. People in general have these subconscious desires to intermingle with others who “look” a certain way. Retail marketing companies such as Abercrombie and Fitch have implemented these emotional impulses as a marketing strategy to the point at which practice has become policy. Marketing is being taken to new heights. In today’s society, not only do companies spend a majority of their money on advertising, but they also use their employees as portable posters. If employees were supposed to be “walking billboards,” then most people would agree that not everyone would
be eligible for that particular position. Discrimination is defined as showing favor unjustly.
What some corporations are doing today is clearly unjust. People cannot control their appearance completely. Mr. Greenhouse clearly states in his article that hiring certain people that “look great,” is discriminatory and should not occur. That is why the author’s premises are invalid with exceptions, with Mr. Cohen’s analysis. It is a known fact that one cannot sell everything by appearance alone. Mr. Cohen, a senior industry analysis with the NPD Group, stated, “Retailers defend the approach to hiring based on image as necessary and smart, and the industry experts see the point.” Cohen asserts that hiring based on looks is necessary in order to make a profit. He states, that stores have developed new ways to attract the attention of consumers to their brands, by hiring young women who contribute to a store’s sense of style. He concludes that young men are attracted to stores that hire attractive young women and those young men and women are used sex symbols in many retail stores. Every company would love to get by without spending one dime on advertising. This shows that ugly people don’t get hire; companies don’t care about job experiences. They care whether you are attractive or not. Ugly people
should be the ones sewing the companies for job discrimination. With more than 6 billion people, the world has a large variety of human shapes and colors. However, by nature, the human being tends to see others as black, white, yellow, red and brown. As human spread throughout the world, their adaptations to different living conditions and genetic mutations added distinct characteristics to the people. People are supposed be hired based on their ability. For instance, Stephen j. Roppolo, a New Orleans lawyer who represents many hotels and restaurants, stated, “I tell employers that their main focus needs to be hiring somebody who can get the job done.” Hiring for looks is risky from a legal standpoint because even lawyers that represent the businesses are saying that companies should hire based on merit so that they do not get into trouble with the law. Hiring by looks can cause numerous discriminatory lawsuits, both at the government level and the emotional level. Greenhouse states, “if you’re hiring by looks, then you can run into problems of race discrimination, and even disability discrimination.” That being said, you will head on with full of responsibility with the law and might be sued for discriminating the people by their race. Some employers practice blatant forms of minority discrimination by paying lower salaries and other compensation to blacks and Hispanics. Others engage in quota systems by denying promotions and jobs to individuals based on race or color. Federal laws prohibit employers of 15 or more employees from discriminating based on race or color. Virtually all states have even stronger anti-discrimination laws directed to fighting job-related race and minority discrimination. In some states, companies with fewer than eight employees can be found guilty of discrimination. Discrimination affects people all over the world. People of all ethnicities and from all different walks of life are influenced in some way by workplace discrimination. "Discrimination" means unequal treatment. One of the most common elements discriminated against is a person’s ethnicity, or their race. This type of discrimination is not worth the pain and suffering of one human being in return for fame and money. People are living longer and therefore are staying in the workforce for a longer period.
Every corporation is aware of employment discrimination lawsuits increasing on a yearly basis. However, one type of lawsuit that employers often overlook is the case of age discrimination. When the average girl sees a super model such as Britney spears wearing Abercrombie and Fitch they think the key to being beautiful and popular is to match their wardrobes. Age discrimination can be obvious such as hiring a younger, inexperienced, more attractive person for a position than an older person with a strong background in a similar position. Alternatively, it can be subtle. Transferring an older person when the person reaches 60 to a less demanding, unrewarding job, filling in the vacancy with a younger employee, or inheriting a new boss that creates a miserable environment for the administrative assistant so the person will quit. Even if the older worker were with a lower paying, lower level job, this still would be difficult because the employer would have probably started at the bottom of a new job where salary is not comparable. Recently a bill was introduced to accept positions that earn 70% or more of past salaries. Older workers also suffer from the discrimination that younger workers prefer to work around people like themselves. Younger workers felt older workers were like their mom and dad and did not want to supervise them, felt they were less competent, they might know more than
they do and make them look bad, and were hard to relate from. For example, a restaurant in St. Joseph, Mo., after accusing it of age discrimination against a 47-year-old waiter. The waiter, Michele Cornell, had worked at the restaurant for 23 years, but when it reopened after renovations, it refused to rehire her because the commisiion said, she no longer fir the young, trendy looked it had adopted. Among all the various discrimination cases, age discrimination can be the most potentially damaging to a corporation. A macho undercurrent holds, which tells us that disputes can often be won with a physical fight if all else fails. Western thinking teaches us that we may pursue an argument to its end for short-term advantage, in any way that we can. Even if a finger is not raised in anger, assumptions of the strength of argument are weighted with posturing. To fail to match this posturing is seen as weakness in a small man. To match it, aggressiveness and the "Napoleon complex" is assumed. So in many situations, short men, whatever they do, will be labeled as having "short man's syndrome," with all the baggage and circular arguments for its confirmation attached. The taller man or women is seen as more successful in society, and as a self-serving prophesy becomes successful with greater ease. Indeed, top positions are virtually out of bounds to the smaller man. A comparison made with the problems faced by ethnic minorities and women is most fair. I was reading a piece on a Web site recently, My Favorite Star Web magazine. Joyce Marcel titled the article, THE INCREDIBLY SHRINKING MOVIE STARS. Ms. Marcel pulls no punches in her wonderment about the new breed of short actors. She states, "So in an age when people are growing to almost twice the height they reached 100 years ago*, why are Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Dreyfuss and so many other male movie stars now so shrimp-like?" She goes on to state, "So if I have to put up with little elves for male movie stars, they'd better be glamorous, light-hearted, sexy little elves. Then I'll let them be." This is a prime example of the general attitude toward the short male. What she's really saying is that she does not like short male actors playing the role of a `real man´. She can tolerate them only as light-hearted `little´ playthings and nothing more. She can use any type of derogatory terms that she wishes without any fear of appearing prejudiced. She knows she can get away with it. I wonder what would happen if she compared black people to monkeys the way she freely compares short men to `shrimps´? I do believe she would be out of a job and her statements would be well publicized. Abercrombie's aggressive approach to building a pretty and handsome sales force, an effort that company officials proudly acknowledge, is a leading example of what many industry experts and sociologists describe as a steadily growing trend in American retailing. They think that attractive sales people will bring in more sales for them. This means looks is more important than brains. Hiring based on looks solely to raise profits is ethically and morally wrong. This idea will eventually end our morality. Health rates will drop and human sanity will continue to be taken away. In order to save our society and its morals, we should ban discrimination, or as some would call it hiring based on looks. When you have a person who has experience you could expected from them to accomplished their job. They would always be on time or even earlier. You would not hear bad comments about that person. Their very responsible and would not complain about getting their job done. That being said, is that companies like Hollister and Abercrombie and Fitch need to get a reality check and realize that not everyone can be born looking like a supermodel and that what they are doing is not "helping the company's image," it’s discriminating against normal, hardworking people who deserve a lot more respect than they are receiving.