Dear Joan, 

What is lookism?

Some papers:

Article Influences on Clergy Attitudes Toward Aging

Article Quality of life and comorbidity among older home care client...

Article Attitudes toward Aging in Portuguese Nursing Students

Article Changes in students' attitudes toward aging after a gerontol...

Lookism is similar to sexism, racism, ageism, and sizes. It refers to prejudice against people who are unattractive/ugly. 

Joan

The Influence of Globalization on “Lookism” In Workplace Environments of Different Cultures Zahra Ghodrati*, Joorabchi TN, Abdul Muati

Dear Joan, 

Here are some more papers. Check the method section. From Abreu:

A questionnaire was used to gather data, including students’ demographic variables, opinions as assessed in the Inventory of Attitudes toward Aging, and the contact participants with elderly persons. The mean score on the Inventory of Attitudes toward Aging was = 2.05 (SD = 0.32), suggesting negative attitudes toward aging, particularly as identified by scores in factor 1 and factor 3.

Article The Effects of Attitude towards Aging on Successful Aging: T...

Article Attitudes toward Aging in Portuguese Nursing Students

Article Effects of a gerotranscendence educational program on gerotr...

Article The Effect of Social Welfare Workers’ Attitude towards Aging...

Thank you for these suggestions. We have several scales that measure attitudes toward aging and/or elders, but wanted another scale more specific to appearance judgments. We did see the scale about lookism in the workplace, which has two good items we might be able to use. The other items are specific to the workplace, and they seem to us to be too difficult to adapt to our needs.

Perhaps these are better:

Article Gender, Age and Ageism: Experiences of Women Managers in Fin...

Article Gendered ageism and "lookism": A triple jeopardy for female academics

Article Frontline employees' self- perception of ageism, sexism, and...

Dear All

See below a definition of Lookism that I wrote for Wiley's  Dictionary of Gender Studies

Dr Jacqueline Granleese

Email:[email protected]

Lookism, a term coined in the late 1970s (Ayto, 1999), describes a form of discrimination based on an individual’s physical appearance. It is under-pinned by social science research which explores cultural stereotypes of beauty and physical attractiveness such as Langlois et al’s (2000) meta-analytic study of facial attractiveness findings from 1932 to 1999. They found a common standard of beauty both within and across cultures, with attractive adults and children being judged more favourably and tending to demonstrate more positive behaviours and traits than those judged unattractive. Lookism occurs when individuals are compared to the stereotype either to their detriment or advantage. Rhode (2010) argues lookism occurs across a range of inherent characteristics that are “fixed” at birth, such as face and body morphology, to those that may be considered more “mutable” in nature e.g. clothes, make-up, grooming.

Individuals’ physical appearance has been researched in the economic literature linking physical characteristics such as beauty, hair colour, obesity and height to labour market outcomes. Evidence to date suggests that in the USA there is a wage premium for some physical characteristics of between 1% to 13% for above average looking people and a penalty of 1% to 15% for below average looking people. Controlling for factors such as intelligence levels, a longitudinal study of 11,000 UK people born in 1958, found unattractive men ‘s pay penaIty is 4% to 15%, and approximately 11% for unattractive women (Harper, 2000). Individuals, irrespective of gender, who are judged as more beautiful or attractive than average, or blonde women, and taller men earn more money during their working life and are more likely to be promoted than their less attractive, brunette and shorter colleagues. Women in male dominated jobs/professions, however, may find their attractiveness counts against them in the promotion stakes. Moreover, an individual is less likely to be employed, or, when employed, less likely to be promoted if they are obese.

There is a paucity of legislation to protect individuals against lookism. In the USA, Michigan became the first state to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on weight and height, as do the cities of Santa Cruz, Binghampton, and San Francisco. Washington D.C. prohibits all forms of personal appearance discrimination, while Urbana, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin have ordinances banning discrimination based on “personal appearance” and “physical appearance”, respectively. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission now views the extremely obese, or those whose obesity results in physical ailments, as disabled. Such individuals are thus protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990. Where there is no legislation to protect against lookism in the USA, cases as applicable are cobbled unto other civil rights legislation. See Cavico et al (2012) for a fuller discussion. Most USA jurisdictions, however, do not consider lookism as unlawful.

In the United Kingdom, also subject to the jurisdiction of the European Union, there is no legislation covering discrimination on the grounds of physical appearance other than where such discrimination is covered in the Equality Act 2010 by the protected categories of sex, race, age, sexual orientation particularly transgender individuals, religious belief and disability. Following the Eweida vs British Airways plc case, the airport worker who took her case to the European Court of Human Rights, and won the right to wear a religious cross to work, some aspects of personal appearance bias may be covered by the Human Rights Act 1998.

The state of Victoria, Australia remains the only jurisdiction outside the USA that places an explicit ban on appearance-related bias. Since the law's introduction in 1995, now covered by the state’s Equality Act 2010, the protected category of "physical features" (a person’s height, weight, size or other bodily characteristics) has resulted in thousands of lookism complaints being dealt with by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. In other Australian states, where applicable, lookism cases are considered under other discrimination legislation.

Increasingly companies, especially in the retail industry, are employing individuals who exemplify their brand and or image, such as Abercrombie & Fitch’s desire to employ an “all American” workforce, or Google’s youthful corporate culture. Such lookist branding activities may result in discrimination cases being brought against employers, if no defence can be made for a Genuine Occupational Characteristic (UK) or a Bona-fide Occupational Qualification (USA). Indeed Abercrombie & Fitch were sued by employees of colour in the USA federal court under civil rights laws, reaching an out of court settlement at a cost of 50 million dollars.

Employees who suffer lookism may take cases under other discrimination legislation not just because there is a lack of legislative support but because lookism is associated with other forms of discrimination. Granleese and Sayer (2006) argue that you look old or young, male or female, and white or of colour. Hence lookism is inextricably linked to the “fixed” elements of physical appearance which may give rise to ageism, sexism, and racism. Moreover, some forms of body gloss e.g. turbans, burkas i.e. “mutable” forms of physical appearance are associated with religious beliefs. Hence you look like a Sikh man or a Moslem woman which may result in individuals being discriminated against on the basis of lookism and religious beliefs.

Lookism is a growing area of research interest in economics, termed “pulchronomics”: Focus being given to the need to disentangle the confounding variable of levels of productivity from pay penalty and pay premium measures. In employment law, in what has been called the “new frontier” of employment discrimination, opinion is more divided. While Tietje and Cresap (2005) argue against state intervention stating that policy interventions to redress lookism cannot be justified on moral grounds until it is shown that beauty discrimination is unjust, and Malos (2007) argues, given court treatment of discrimination cases based on physical appearance is inconsistent, employers should develop their own policies to limit their legal liability, most researchers support the need for future research to identify apposite discrimination laws to provide adequate remedies for those discriminated against on the grounds of lookism.

SEE ALSO: Aesthetic Labour; Appearance Discrimination; Beauty; Physical Appearance; Physical Attractiveness; Pulchronomics; Weight Discrimination.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS:

Ayto, J. (1999) Twentieth Century Words. Oxford University Press, New York.

Cavico, F.J, Muffler, S.C., and Mujtaba, B.G. (2012) Appearance discrimination in employment: Legal and ethical implications of “lookism” and “lookphobia”. Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: An International Journal, Vol. 32, No 1, 83-119.

Granleese, J., and Sayer, G. (2006) Gendered ageism and “lookism”: a triple jeopardy for female academics. Women in Management Review, Vol 21, No 6, 500-517.

Hamermesh, D. (2011) Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People are More Successful. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Harper, B. (2000) Beauty, stature and the labour market: a British cohort study, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Vol 62, 771-800.

Langlois, J.H. et al., (2000) Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 126, 390-423.

Malos, S. (2007) Appearance-based sex discrimination and stereotyping in the workplace: whose conduct should we regulate? Employees Responsibilities and Rights Journal, Vol 19, 95-111.

Rhode, D.L. (2010) The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law. Oxford University Press, New York.

Tietje, L., and Cresap, S. (2005) Is lookism unjust?: The ethics of aesthetics and public policy implications. Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 31-50.