The article,“Eight female Egyptian presenters told to lose weight or lose jobs” Saeed Kamali Dehghan reported that the announcer who has worked for more than 20 years for Egypt television broadcasting, has been caught up in an unwanted controversy from the company. Eight woman presenters were given ultimatum to lose weight or lose their job. (2016)
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My Yes/No question is:
Can appearance hurt your career?
My answer is:
Yes, sad but it true.
Support
Even
we can’t judge book by its cover but we can’t deny that people usually judge
others on their appearance first. Especially, when it related to job and business.
According to
the research from Cornell University found that “when white females put on an
additional 64 pounds, her wages drop 9%. And according to a 2007 paper from the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is a statistically significant wage
penalty for overweight white women with a wage loss of 12%.”
Moreover,
Michigan State University study “has uncovered an ugly truth about the American
workplace: looks do matter. Researchers found that employees who are considered
unattractive are more likely to be belittled and bullied in the workplace and
were treated much more harshly than attractive employees."
What
are the reasons? There are psychological reasons
behind that. From the past, better looking person were thought to be more
productive while being large, unattractive leads to negative stereotypes thinking that person is lazy,slow,ugly so it lead to discrimination.
One of
my friend who worked in a recruitment company
even said “Once she sent one of applicant profile that doesn't fit society's standards of beauty to
the company and the company replied back “Why do you sent me this person and
please sent us the new good looking one”
Even
she was qualified but sad it the reality so she didn’t get a job. Discriminating
against
people based on their outer appearance is wrong but you can’t deny that it
happened. The company want to make a profit out
of you and
employees are representation of the company so
it crucial for
a company too
There
are many researches demonstrated positive biases toward attractive
people but
the truth is everyone getting older and become less and less attractive so I
think we should treat
others how we want to be treated, also considered their personality or attitude rather than appearance in order to have a long relationship. However, we
can’t choose all the people in our life and also can’t change others but yourself so everyone can
improve
their outward appearance too, dress nicely and appropriate, wear make up, lose
weight, put high heels on, wear suit and tie. You can look better, confident
and there are many researches show that clothing can also affect trustworthy and success.
___________
Reference
Dehghan, S . 2016: Eight female Egyptian presenters
told to lose weight or lose jobs”. (2016, August 17).BBC
News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-37100676
It is a sad truth. Appearance matters deep to the subconscious level. For instance each color gives off different feeling. There was a video I watched about the effect of color to trustworthiness. In the video, the guy was wearing blue shirt, approaching a random stranger, and telling that stranger one fact. In another experiment, the guy was wearing red shirt instead. He told the same fact to a randomly selected stranger. Later, the stranger was asked if he or she thinks the guy was telling the truth. The result is not surprising. A significant numbers of strangers says they trust blue shirted guy more than the numbers that say they trust the red guy. Just by your shirt color, people assume your personalities, your reliability. It is not strange that we discriminate. However, what matters is our intention to discriminate.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of this sort of discrimination is not even conscious. In fact, I'm sure that many people don't want to discriminate and are not aware that they are even doing it. Unfortunately, we human beings often don't even know what's going on in our own minds: we can be surprised when research tells us things about ourselves, such a strong tendency to discriminate. I like Oil's report of the shirt colour research above. Behavioural economists such as Dan Ariely have also done a lot of interesting research on these sorts of questions, and our unconscious drives are of great interest to the advertising industry.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the job interview, the interviewers expects a lot from the candidates such as a competence to work, an ability to communicate, an interpersonal skill or a face that will admire their clients. So sometimes when you miss only one unnecessary qualification that they need, they might skip you and look for someone else in their long list. It is totally ugly truth that appearance or beauty can hurt our career this much. But your advice to dress neatly, wear make up can help in some extent.
ReplyDeleteWe all get used to assess things for the outer appearance, like judging books from the cover. But I am trying not to be in that way. I respect people from their goodness inside. I rather admire the poor who are kind and generous. In the rural ares people might cover themselves with the old clothes but a good hearth is beneath that shabby outfits. I sometimes can't accept people who has educated from overseas in the democratic country but became advocates for non-democracy after returning home.
ReplyDeleteCan anyone suggest a useful technique to avoid judging people by their appearance?
DeleteAs a couple of responses note, it seems that we are programmed to discriminate in this way, however much we don't want to. And I sometimes catch myself doing the same.
Normally, ugly people wouldn't have chance like the good looking people. However, there are many ugly people achieve higher income because of their ability, characteristic and talent. For example, Kalamae is a celebrity for master of ceremony in Thailand. She isn't beautiful as other superstar but she has talent in speaking humorous and positive thinking. Therefore, she become successful in her career path. Personally, I think that having talent, such as high performance of personal ability and having good characteristic, could avoid people judging in their appearance.
DeleteA way to avoid judging people is get to learn how your thought is formed and if your mind is quick enough to see the early stage of your thought formation process. Its chain will be broken and you will be free from your automatic reaction: to make judgement on the others. You will learn this on mindfulness training in Buddhism.
DeleteAlthough we know that we shouldn't judge people only their appearance without consideration about their behavior and thinking, many people still trust other people through their bodies and faces. I mean that people with good looking always are credited but ugly people are opposite. I think about 'love' that people always admire beautiful girls or handsome boys at the first impression but they haven't known about each other well before. And also more people prefer their loves with good looking than behavior and thinking. However, I agree with you that we should maintain our faces and body shapes because thses can convince other people to trust you can be responsible about your health and maybe also other important things, like working, studying, and so on.
ReplyDelete