A Gauge of Worth: The Consideration of Women’s Compliance with Beauty Standards in the Workplace

• Women have to constantly act to be considered feminine.
• The achievements of women are given a lesser priority than their physical appearance.
• Women face indirect and direct judgments based on their physical attributes. 
• Existing in spaces where judgment is rampant causes women to face issues.

“ Femininity as an Act of Performance”

An average woman is expected to partake in tedious acts to enjoy the privilege of existing without ridicule. While men get to exist in their natural forms without putting extra effort into their presentation. Women have to let go of their natural forms and put effort into presenting themselves as socially acceptable.

From removing all societally proclaimed unwanted body hair to putting extra effort into achieving a feminine youthful look. Every performed act is a checkbox being ticked off toward achieving what people consider true womanhood. The expectations are normalized to such an extent, that the true form of a woman’s body is considered abnormal.  As a result,  in a society where existence in natural form is constantly questioned, women face pressure to conform to societal standards. This translates into intersectionality in the workplace. Women are looked down upon if they do not conform to the conventional standards of beauty.

These expectations are often unavoidable due to how constant and loud their reminders are to women. Their presence stays as an overbearing shadow through all stages of a woman’s life.

The Pressure of Prioritizing Appearance in the Workplace

Every achievement of a woman is met with an inquiry into the reason for her failure to become attractive. Women who have established families while taking care of multiple people and recovering from childbirth multi-task in many ways. But even when providing services that come from a place of selflessness, they are bound to be ridiculed. The failure to reach the expectations of maintaining a youthful and skinny appearance leads them to face contempt from people. 

For women who are well-settled in their careers, not looking conventionally attractive is taken as an invitation for criticism. Whether due to the inability to see women being successful or due to not being successful themselves. People target the sole self-defined fault they can find in women to extinguish the confidence they derive from their achievements. They target the inability or unwillingness of complying to beauty standards as a way to disregard the success of women. Constant reminders of one’s failure to prioritize physical appearance are done to humble women who are thriving in life.

The negativity women suffer in workplaces due to being unattractive to the gaze of a third person doesn’t stop here. Other than being questioned about their appearance, women also face the issue of missing opportunities they deserve. Women who are bigger than the expectations of the current trends face discrimination on the presumption that they are lazy. Their physical condition is seen as a sign of underlying traits of laziness, overconsumption, lack of control, and more. These presumptions based on physical characteristics which are uncontrollable for many become an excuse to deprive women of opportunities.

And just like this, appearance discrimination becomes an addition to the list of discrimination in the workplace that women face.

How Beauty Standards in the Workplace Affect Women

On average, a person spends 90,000 hours of their life working at a job. That is multiple months spent constantly at workplaces. Existing in one place for such long periods of time is bound to shape a person’s behavior and mental being. For women, mental health in workplaces is seriously affected by the discrimination they face on the basis of their looks. It can have various effects on them, affecting their ability to achieve their goals and who they want to be

Low Self-Esteem

The failure to meet beauty standards results in women having low self-esteem. This state prevents them from taking up projects they are capable of because they believe they aren’t capable of contributing. In addition to this, a lower sense of self-esteem contributes to the hesitancy women feel in standing up for themselves. This further ruins their quality of work and most importantly makes their situation miserable.

Eating Disorder

Research shows that on a global scale, 50 percent of women have put their health at risk by under-eating. This issue of under-eating when left untreated transforms into a serious issue of disordered eating habits. The most prevalent female beauty standard of today is a skinny body. Anything above the bare minimum of weight makes a woman considered lazy and even repulsive by some. To avoid ridicule for something that forms a first impression, women end up adopting harmful means to reach an ideal weight.

Anxiety

Women develop anxiety issues when surrounded by people who are constantly in a vocally loud state of judgment. Anxiety at the workplace sabotages the input that an individual is capable of making. It hinders the ability to interact with colleagues and clients while making a person have further mental and physical issues. Moreover often women’s medical concerns are dealt with neglect or further judgment by people.

The Other Attractive Side of the Coin

There is a crucial thing that needs to be understood when studying the effects of forced compulsion on beauty standards. That is, learning that conventionally attractive women should not be ridiculed for the effects that are caused by patriarchy. One should know that just because someone conforms to beauty standards, doesn’t mean that they don’t face ridicule.

 On the one hand, patriarchy ridicules women who don’t conform to beauty standards by calling them lazy. On the other hand, it shames women who do not conform to the beauty standard. This is achieved by undermining their achievements as a result of good looks alone. It takes away the credit of a woman’s hard work by solely focusing on her looks. 

A failure to understand this phenomenon results in rivalry among women slowing societal progress. On the other hand, this progress aims to eliminate things forced on women through patriarchy.  

Prioritizing physical appearance, a dynamic factor, among all other factors of a woman is a dehumanizing practice. The concept of femininity and beauty is individually unique for every woman. Defining such a concept through the patriarchal gaze and enforcing it on women only harms them.