Going for the Look

Going For the Look

In the society we all live in today, where outside beauty is emphasized more than inner beauty, and 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 a business point of view the real money maker is to find a brand enhancer or what’s known as a walking billboard. 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 not exactly discrimination because they have nothing else against other people except that they aren't selling material. Although it might be seen as discrimination in only hiring certain types of peoples, I agree with Cohen that it is a smart move to hire based on image because it is an effective marketing strategy.
At the same time hiring people purely based on looks is morally wrong. To hire anyone based on race, sex, age, even on how they look is discrimination. In doing so, some of those companies have been skirting the edges of antidiscrimination laws and provoking a wave of private and government lawsuits. Elysa Yanowitz a west coast sales manager for L’Oreal said she felt intense pressure to hire attractive saleswomen, even if they were incompetent. In fact, she says, company officials sought to force her out after she ignored an order to fire a woman that a top manager described as not “hot” enough. Another example of one of these companies showing the same trend of only hiring attractive people is Ms.Nill’s story. Ms.Nill is five foot six and has long blond hair. She looks...