Deborah Rhode's new book on appearance discrimination is a well-documented, thoughtful, and much-needed contribution to the discussion of potential injustice. The Beauty Bias addresses a broad audience, and Rhode clearly saw that the first challenge was to change the minds of those who think appearance is not a very important axis of injustice. The first three-quarters of the book present the empirical case for the injustice of judgment made on the basis of appearance, drawn from a broad range of sources from economics, history, psychology, evolutionary biology, and sociology. A significant strength of this book is its review of the empirical proof of appearance discrimination. Rhode argues persuasively that discrimination on the basis of appearance not only exists, but also that it organizes our life chances across nearly every sphere from the bedroom to the workplace, that it connects and supports more-recognized forms of prejudice on the basis of race, age, gender, and disability, and that it is produced and sustained by a wide range of institutional forms and personal practices. Appropriately given our historical moment, a significant focus is the relationship between body fatness and appearance discrimination, particularly for women. Rhode also includes both cross-national and historical contexts for the legal regulation and nonregulation of appearance, which are enriching for the primary argument although not themselves the focus.
The Beauty Bias consists of a normative legal argument backed by legal research and secondary sources. The final quarter of the book is the legal analysis, the most original and interesting contribution. Rhode explains why the rather limited array of legal options we currently have against discrimination is not very effective generally or for appearance bias in particular. She has surveyed each of the laws that have attempted to regulate appearance bias in the United States and in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. This book is the best source on these laws. Rhode's discussion traces each law, and many of the municipal codes, explains what's covered and how complaints are handled, and gives examples of how each one has worked in practice. Many of these laws turn out to be rarely invoked and even when workers make claims, there was not much evidence that the law really mattered. For example, in the section on Madison, Wisconsin's ban on discrimination based on physical appearance, a pregnant worker's belly is still deemed “inappropriate” and must be covered with a jacket and the American Association of Retired Persons could still require “appropriate accessories” and “stylish shoes” (p. 132). Santa Cruz's appearance ordinance, which got a lot of publicity when enacted, has not had one filing in 15 years. Rhode shares some suggestions about why appearance discrimination seems to be common, yet remedies are rarely invoked (this may be because of the difficulty of using law generally or perhaps because the communities that enact these ordinances are more tolerant to begin with and do not have much discrimination) but this question is intriguingly open for further research using different methods.
Rhode argues throughout that although law alone cannot do much to change attitudes, legal change is still helpful and has a good track record. Rhode's best suggestion is that already-existing discrimination laws should be made more sensitive to appearance bias manifested as distaste for racialized appearances (hair styles, dress, nails, for example) or sexist requirements (make-up, thinness, uncomfortable or embarrassing clothing). Her argument for greater consumer protection against false advertising for diets is a great example of looking outside discrimination law for helpful policy changes, although I would have liked to see the same interest in regulatory action applied to the EEOC, which could be empowered to do much more to survey, publicize, and take action against workplace discrimination. Rhode does not engage with the theoretical complexities of appearance and stereotyping as other works on appearance discrimination do (Reference Post, Appiah, Butler, Grey and SiegelPost et al. 2001; Reference KirklandKirkland 2008). The Beauty Bias would work well in a syllabus paired with readings that press the theoretical puzzles or challenge the focus on law as important for legal change. (In an era of tight budgets for students buying books, I have to note that the substantive argument is available as a previously published law review article and that some of the added material in the book is quite repetitive.) The most important baseline assumption of the book worthy of critical engagement is the too-easy turn to health as a proper focus of our attention in the place of appearance. Invoking health often works this way: “Health, not weight,” “Health, not beauty.” Such invocations make it seem as though health is not also a highly politicized, moralized concept that organizes inequalities and discrimination, giving it an undeserved patina of beneficence (Reference Metzl and KirklandMetzl & Kirkland 2010). Rhode acknowledges the possibility of just shifting the register of stigmatization in the turn to health, but leaves this debate for another day.
