What is lookism? Lookism is the prejudice or discrimination of an individual based on his or her physical appearance. This is especially true when ones physical appearance is believed to fall short of societal notions of beauty (“Lookism,” 2016). There is such an importance placed on looks because we live in a visual society. People are discriminated against for a number of different reasons and there are many types of lookism in today’s society. One type of discrimination that is based off of appearance is weightism. Weightism is the bias or discrimination against those who are overweight (“Weightism,” 2016). Our society places such an emphasis on this aspect of lookism because they believe that unlike someone’s race or gender their weight …show more content…
It is possible that an individual may not want to date or be friends with someone as a result of their weight. This type of rejection can be severely damaging for this person and could cause them to not want to socialize or try and form relationships with other people. Recent reports show that overweight women are twice as vulnerable as men when it comes to forming relationships (Dye, 2008). This is not only as a result of being discriminated against for their weight, but it is also because women are held to a different standard of how they should look in order to be beautiful then men …show more content…
Being overweight can often make employers view you differently and question your abilities. My supervisor at my internship is overweight and she shared with me that she had experienced weightism at a job interview once. This job required her to be able to get on and off of the floor with young children. During her interview, the interview her asked if she would physically be able to do this because of her size. This is just one example of how individuals who are overweight in the workplace experience weightism. Studies show that 78% of managers responsible for recruiting staff will not employ an obese person if there is a thinner, equally qualified candidate (“Workplace ‘Weightism..,” 2015). Many overweight people also experience weightism when it comes to promotions, wages and other aspects of their jobs. I was very surprised to learn how serious this form of lookism has become in our society. Before completing this assignment I had never even realized that ‘weightism’ even existed. Growing up my sister was bullied for being overweight, which makes this a very personal topic for me. She had always shared how hard it was for her being over weight, but being young I never thought about how this was a problem for all people that are overweight not just my sister. Knowing that people in the world we live in can have such negative feelings towards a person because they are not thin
“Fat Acceptance”: An Argument Lacking Validity Cynara Geisslers’ essay “Fat Acceptance: A Basic Primer,” was published in Geez Magazine in 2010. The focus of the essay is to refute the pressure of society to be thin and promote self-acceptance regardless of size. While this essay touches on many agreeable points, it tends to blow many ideas out of context in an attempt to create a stronger argument. The article takes on a one-sided argument without any appropriate acknowledgement of the opposition, overlooks the risks of ignoring personal health, and has a strong feminist ideology associated towards the essay which tends to make the validity of her argument questionable.
This is an essay written in the MIT Sloan Management Review that presents the correlation between businesses and the issue of obesity in order to persuade businesses to take action in regards to preventing the issue. Therefore, its target audience is anyone who currently works in business or plans to do so in the future. In this review, the author begins by citing four internal and external reasons for which businesses should care about obesity: self-preservation, public criticism, employee productivity, and opportunity. The author proceeds by providing an idea as to how businesses can assist in reversing the trend. In order to do so, he analyzes what he considers to be the two sides of the obesity problem: physical activity and food consumption.
Rhodes, Deborah L. "Why looks are the last bastion of discrimination." Washington Post. 23 May 2010. The Washington Post. 26 Mar. 2014 .
To begin, a mechanism of discriminatory and violent systems is appearance. Appearance is the way that someone or something looks, meaning not everyone looks or acts the same by performance. In Roxane Gay’s novel, she points out that she wants acceptance for her body shape, and yet wanting to change it. Although she tried
We need to acknowledge that our methods to control overweight and obesity may commence, but must not conclude with individual accountability. Only a number of diseases require a general approach, other than the effort to hold and decrease the levels of overweight and obesity, and in few places are the stakes higher. Employers seem to have accepted this and are attempting to develop programs to address it.
Smith also implies that being overweight does not only limit the person by just his or her appearance, but factors such as capabilities and endurance should apply. For example, when she explains that "fat" people are discriminated to get jobs strictly because of their weight, the first thing that comes to my mind is modeling (86). Stereotypically, I picture a lobby full of slender women and brawny men, who are waiting for their name to be called for getting the part in a lingerie advertisement. Then, I see an overweight woman walk in, and everyone is staring, chuckling, and whispering, making her feel out of place, but now that is diminishing and there are plus sized models.
Pinfitore, R., Dugoni. B. L., Tindale, R. S., Spring, B. (1994). Bias against overweight job applicants in a simulated employment interview. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(6), 909-917.
It looks like looks are here to stay” (Akst 331). Akst’s degenerate remarks about beauty revolves around self-centered and arrogant values. He mentioned so many scientific statements about how humans should focus on maintaining an attractive appearance for society, and not for themselves. If Mairs and Walker read Akst’s essay, they would both disagree with his opinion about beauty. Both women would convey a message of accepting and embracing one’s beauty, despite the society’s view. Akst limits differences in a degrading way by mentioning “overweight” individuals are worthless and they send a negative message to society. The reader and the women can disagree with Akst’s statement because size, appearance, height, ethnicity, gender, and other abnormalities does not send a negative message, it is the comments made by a bias hypocrite who sees beauty as the aspiration to an individual’s
Libal, Autumn. "The Poor Get Fat, The Rich Get Thin?" Social Discrimination & Body Size: Too Big to FIt? 2005. 40-55. Print. 10 Nov. 2013.
Therefore, in the forty years of her experiencing fat activism it has shown that there are alternative ways to promote fitness and wellbeing for those whom suffer from obesity, that does not comprise of punishing diets or with humiliating practices. Cooper insinuates that the stigmatization that obese people, poses a contrast to the normalised views of an individual, by stating ‘being fat affects ordinary areas of our lives’ (Cooper, 1998: 32). Thus, daily life for an obese individual becomes a struggle and activities that ‘normal’ individuals take for granted take much longer for an individual that suffers from obesity to accomplish. Obesity becomes a social stigma and more than often they are judged on their appearance and Cooper emphasises that in the result of this ‘fat people receive a huge amount of unwanted attention’ (Cooper, 1998:
Physical beauty is constructed by the society that we live in. We are socialized from a very young age to aspire to become what our culture deems ideal. Living in the United States, as in many other Western cultures, we are expected to be well-educated, maintain middle-class or upper-class status, be employed as well as maintain a physical standard of beauty. Although beauty is relative to each culture, it is obvious that we as Americans, especially women, are expected to be maintain a youthful appearance, wear cosmetics and fashionable clothes, but most importantly: not to be overweight. Our society is socially constructed to expect certain physical features to be the norm, anything outside this is considered deviant. Obesity is defined as outside the norms of our culture's aesthetic norms (Gros). “People who do not match idealized or normative expectations of the body are subjected to stigmatization” (Heckert 32). Obesity is a physical deviance; it is one that is an overwhelming problem in our society as we are always judged daily, by our appearance. Those who do not conform to the standards of beauty, especially when it comes to weight, are stigmatized and suffer at the hands of a society that labels them as deviants.
In the media there are people who view women a certain way, and if we don't hold to the standard that we are not as good as other women who are the size the media says we have to be. In an article it said that "Large women in America are to all intents and purposes invisible in today's thinness-obsessed culture. A big women is neither seen nor heard, and is defined purely in terms of her weight and other people's prejudice." (Goodman par 1) This is a hard thing for women that a heavier to understand because they want the person to think that they are heard. This plays into the way that they think and the way that women look at their bodies. You can see this happening with different types of televisions shows, which put on the show thinner women. "Practically the only television programming that addresses her directly consists of weight-loss ads, the message: lose weight. You're not real women unless you're thin (Goodman)". It is hard to think that this statement could be true, but
Employment discrimination legislation has evolved to include race, disabilities, sexual harassment of either gender, and age. In lieu of this evolution and an increasing trend toward equality for all individuals in the workplace, the time has come for the protective reach of employment discrimination law to cover ugliness. While the proposal may cause titters at first, evidence exists that discrimination based on looks (or physical appearance) occurs in the workplace. An investigation was conducted by ABC’s 20/20 news program in 1994 that sent two men and two women into the workplace to secure the same jobs (Sessions 1). The individuals were coached to act in a similar manner during the interviews and took with them resumes with matching education and experience. The only difference was that one of the men and one of the women was superior in physical attraction to their counterpart. The results demonstrate whether intentional or not, looks discrimination does play a role in the employment process “In five cases out of five, the more attractive woman got the job; in three chances out of three, the more attractive man was hired” (Sessions 1).
Obesity has the ability to control and ruin your life. Health related issues that are related to obesity include diabetes, weaker physical health and well being, and depression. Bullying is also often targeted towards people who are overweight. Those who are overweight may obtain a negative body image and being unhealthy physically and mentally can cause for a shorter and unhappier life.
A girl scans the sidewalk while walking home after a day of school, hoping no one notices as she hides her face, feeling like an alien in her own skin. Instead of feeling beautiful, she feels hideous because of the words said to her. Body shaming, a term that is becoming an increasingly popular issue because humans are obsessed with appearances. This generation creates these standards and puts pressure on people to live up to and then ridicule those same standards when realizing that the standards are unattainable. Everybody criticizes the way that others look but then began shaming when people began to shame that one's personal appearance. People have separated been into categories based on looks. It’s fat against fit and it is becoming unhealthy. In today's society, body shaming is an ongoing issue. Body Shaming, though active in both genders, is especially harmful to women. Body shaming is pushing women to be insecure, eating disorders, and giving men unrealistic expectations.