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Introduction
This paper is a legal, ethical, and practical examination of appearance discrimination in employment. "Appearance," however, is a broad legal and practical aspect, encompassing not only looks, but also dress and grooming standards in the workplace. This paper focusses in on one important, and highly controversial, aspect of appearance discrimination - discrimination in favor of people who are perceived as physically attractive and against people who are not physically attractive. Like many legal terms, there is a parallel culturally coined descriptive phrase of "lookism," which is widely used to identify this treatment of people in ways biased by their perceived individual level of physical attractiveness. The authors examine federal, state, and local statutes, case law interpreting said statutes, and legal and management commentary regarding appearance discrimination. The authors' scrutiny exclusively focus upon employees being negatively impacted in the workplace due to their perceived "unattractiveness," rather than the "reverse appearance discrimination" perspective, which was alleged in [51] Lorenzana v. Citigroup Inc (2010) by a former Citibank employee claiming that she was terminated for being "too hot" according to her filed complaint. Following this introduction section, the authors first provide some background material as to societal norms concerning "attractiveness," the existence of appearance discrimination in society, especially regarding employment, and the presence of a certain "preferring the pretty" norm, and consequently discrimination against less attractive people.
The next section of the paper is the legal environment, wherein the authors initially discuss the fundamental employment law doctrine in the USA - employment at-will; and then the authors examine important civil rights laws - Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) - and show how these laws relate to appearance discrimination in the narrow sense examined herein of "attractiveness." In the analysis of Title VII, the authors define and differentiate, a "disparate treatment" discrimination case from a "disparate impact" one. The authors also explain two important defenses to Title VII civil rights lawsuits - the "business necessity" test and the bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) doctrine - and demonstrate how these defenses could apply to attractiveness appearance lawsuits. Regardless of any finding of legality to appearance discrimination, the logical questions that emerge from...