Aesthetic labour involves ‘Looking good and sounding right’ (Karlsson, 2012).Using examples from contemporary organisations, critically consider some of the

consequences of aesthetic labour for employees. The concept of “looking good and sounding right” in most workplaces has become akey requirement for most employees. This means that companies are more likely to hirepeople who project their brand image. In this case, aesthetic demands in most sectors,especially in the service and retail industry have become more […]

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consequences of aesthetic labour for employees.

The concept of “looking good and sounding right” in most workplaces has become a
key requirement for most employees. This means that companies are more likely to hire
people who project their brand image. In this case, aesthetic demands in most sectors,
especially in the service and retail industry have become more like a rule. An individual’s
style, looks, shape and size have a crucial role to play in their chances of being hired.
According to Warhurst and Nickson (2021), employers set on aesthetic labour argue that
aesthetics has perceived commercial utility, wherein customers are more likely to shop in
stores with physically attractive and pleasant staff. In the apparel industry, companies openly
hire staff according to appearance-based prejudices, championing homogeneity. For example,
Abercrombie & Fitch and American Apparel are known for promoting a narrow set of beauty
ideals among their employees, whom they also refer to as “models”. Abercrombie has been
involved in litigation for hiring white Anglo-Saxon Protestant-looking sales assistants and
discriminating against people of color and incurred a further settlement of $50 million in
damages. Aesthetic labour ideals promote discrimination at the workplace and further widen
the already existing social inequalities, leading to stress, burnout, and highly demotivated and
deskilled employees.

Numerous scholars have investigated the role of aesthetics in decision-making at the
hiring stage. A good number of hiring managers admit to making hiring decisions based on a
candidate’s physical attributes as a measure of the perceived “fit” for the position being
offered. Inquiry into this trend reveals that employers who stress aesthetics associate physical
attractiveness to good health and higher intelligence. Similarly, facial attractiveness has been

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associated with sociability, a key indicator of success in diverse work environments.
According to James (2007), sociability, intelligence, and health are crucial assets in the
workplace. While such employers might make sound arguments for their hiring strategy, this
model only intensifies social inequalities that already exist. Unfortunately, most employers
get away with this type of discrimination due to a lack of specific laws addressing lookism at
the workplace.

One of the widely-applied notions behind aesthetic labour is that companies are free to
target a certain demographic, hence the necessity of employees to “look and sound” as the
company’s image to increase relatedness to their consumers. Abercrombie and Fitch is
known for discriminatory hiring practices and branding, with a history of denying employees
who don’t fit the image opportunity to work as sales associates in the front of its stores. In
2002, A&F was criticized for the company’s “magalogues” featuring black-and-white images
of scantily dressed men and women, prolonging the company’s iconic ads of shirtless male
models. In 2003, Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch stores featured nine employees of people
of color who were denied jobs for being minorities. Moreover, a former employee with a
prosthetic arm was forced to work in the London store stockroom because she did not fit
A&F’s strict “look policy”, which is required for its shopfloor staff (Williamson, 2014) . In
the company’s job for a brand representative, the job description reads “An individual who is
outgoing, stylish, and helpful” (Glassdoor, 2022) . By focusing on a specific physical
appearance, the company’s policy has resulted in thousands of complaints from stressed and
alienated workers who feel degraded for lacking the ideal image embodied by the company.
Aesthetic labour practices help upscale apparel businesses achieve a desired corporate
image. For companies, their brand image is what distinguished them from their competitors
with the goal of influencing customers through a series of emotional and behavioral
processes. In this case, the companies on a quest for aesthetics aim to tap into customers’

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cognitive mechanisms, especially where the target market is focused. For example,
employees in luxury brands and in contact with customers have to “look and sound” classy
and elegant to make sales.
Some of the most commonly reported consequences of aesthetic labour practices
include increased stress, pressure, high turnover rates. Huzell and Larsson (2012) noted that
aesthetic labour complements emotional labour, and the mixture has been studied under the
theme of bodywork required of employees in many corporate settings. Adomaitis and Raskin
(2017) also note that women are the major providers of both types of labour as they are
considered privier to carry out an “aesthetic exchange”. For example, A&F’s shirtless toned
males would don the entrances of the stores while females were left to work the shop floors,
tend to customers, and remain warm, pleasant, and approachable. Aesthetic labour has been
associated with “lookism”, which is outright discrimination based a person’s physical
appearance. As Hochschild notes in her research, frontline workers are more likely to be
estranged from the products of their labour due to an emphasis on aesthetics. “The company
lays claims not simply to her physical motions-how she handles food trays, but to her
emotional actions and the way they show in the ease of a smile” (Hochschild, 1983, 7-8). In
this context, workers who had been interviewed for the study admitted that “their smiles as
being ‘on’ them but not ‘of’ them”. Being reduced to their uniform or make up or a smile in
the course of emotional labour has been a primary source of alienation.
Aspects of employee empowerment within the upscale retail industry have not been
adequately explored. Ultimately, orienting an industry around lookism leads to deskilling, in
which case an individual’s skills are not nurtured or considered, resulting in a workforce that
can be easily replaced. Essentially, this deskilling can explain part of the high turnover rates
in the retail and fashion industry. Companies that are extremely bent on lookism and provide
limited capacity for empowerment, pose a serious threat to employees who might be

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interested in career fulfillment. For example, in the case of American Apparel, employees
complain of a lack of a real opportunity to grow professionally. This aspect of aesthetic
labour has been studied by different scholars. For example, Grugulis et al. (2004) found that
“at rock bottom, the real personal and transferable ‘skills’ required for preferential
employment are those of whiteness, maleness, and traditional middle-classness” (p. 80).
Therefore, employees who might enjoy the grooming process of aesthetic labour might find
quantifiable skills outside personal presentation as elusive.
Aesthetic labour advances the already existing social inequalities including racism,
sexism, and prejudice. For most companies where employees’ attractiveness matters, the
representative image includes mostly the “cool” and Caucasian cis-gendered archetype that is
communicated in overwhelmingly all-white themes in ads (Ozirus & Adomaitis, 2021). For
example, although American Apparel prides itself as providing a diverse and rich work
environment, the beauty premium is still evident in its models, who appear to be
conventionally attractive. Employees have to conform to a thin, “natural” archetype that can
be emotionally and physically daunting. For example, the pressure to be a certain type has
resulted in an excessive obsession with calorie tracking and an unhealthy relationship with
one’s body. In turn, this could result in a workforce with a high prevalence for mental health
issues.
The expectations of physical attractiveness in potential candidates advance stereotypes
that are already prevalent in employment. In this case, hiring managers think that it would be
increasingly difficult for an “unattractive” candidate to secure a job as it places them further
from the benefits of the beauty premium (Williamson, 2014) . Ultimately, an emphasis on
looking the part places a large percentage of highly-qualified individuals at a disadvantage,
and further causes a shortage of skills in the industry. For example, people with body

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piercings and tattoos are less likely to be hired as front-line employees, and when hired, they
are required to cover up their piercings and tattoos.
Aesthetic labour has been central to the corporate industry, especially in upscale retail
stores where strong emphasis is placed on hiring people who look and sound the part, to an
extent where other qualifications are readily excluded. As employers in the country are
protected through laws such as hiring at their discretion, the practice has become rampant
almost to the point of justifying racism, sexism, and gender discrimination. For example,
Abercrombie and Fitch and American Apparel have made headlines over the past two
decades for hiring a specific archetype in physical attributes. Although such a strategy might
be argued as central to advancing a brand’s personality and image to target customers, it is
downright discriminatory and dehumanizing to other applicants who might possess the right
skills. Furthermore, aesthetic labour is associated with high turnover rates, burnout, worker
delineation, and deskilling among employees. Ultimately, the practice worsens social equality
gaps already in existence, making it difficult to fight for a safe, non-discriminatory work
environment boasting diversity.

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References

Adomaitis, A. D., Raskin, R., & Saiki, D. (2017). Appearance discrimination: Lookism and
the cost to the American woman. : https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/sfd/vol2/iss1/6
James, H. R. (2007). If you are attractive and you know it, please apply: Appearance based
discrimination and employers’ discretion. Val. UL Rev., 42, 629.
Grugulis, I., Warhurst, C. and Keep, E. (2004) ‘What’s happening to skill? In Warhurst, C.,
Grugulis, I., and Keep, E. The skills that matter, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Huzell, H., & Larsson, P. (2012). Aesthetic and athletic employees: The negative outcome of
employers assuming responsibility for sickness benefits. Economic and Industrial
Democracy, 33(1), 103-123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831X11427590
Ozirus, H., & Adomaitis, A. D. (2021). Lookism: An Examination of Inequality in
Appearance within Diversity Practices.
Warhurst, C., & Nickson, D. (2007). Employee experience of aesthetic labour in retail and
hospitality. Work, employment and society, 21(1), 103-120.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017007073622

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