The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law (review)

Beauty may be only skin deep, but the damages associated with its pursuit go much deeper.

Deborah L. Rhode, The Beauty Bias

In a very well-written, well-documented, and accessible book, The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law, Deborah L. Rhode, who is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, unveils the sensitive issue of appearance discrimination.¹ In this provocative study, Rhode takes up the "silly" questions related to appearance and attractiveness and convincingly argues that the effects of our preoccupation with appearance are anything but inconsequential. She sees discrimination against people based on what they look like as a serious problem that should and can be addressed by law. She convincingly argues for a law that would prohibit discrimination based on appearance and succeeds in establishing its necessity. This book helps us to think more deeply about the general implications of beauty in society.

In the book's preface, Rhode uses her own experience to explain how she turned out to be interested in the question of beauty and the law. She describes her personal encounter with appearance issues when she had to speak as chair of the American Bar Association's (ABA) Commission on Women in the Profession at the annual luncheon honouring distinguished women attorneys. Drawing upon her own personal and professional experience, Rhode makes it clear that whether you try to avoid prevailing norms about appearance or you try to comply with them, appearance plays a major role in everyone's daily life. No one can escape appearance concerns. As Rhode wonders if former male ABA commission chair's personal appearance was scrutinized in the same way (personal shopper, professional makeup artist, and hair stylist), she does not fail to note the irony of having image consultants asking if she had proper accessories to wear to the annual luncheon of a commission seeking to promote equality for women in the profession. The book highlights the double standard of appearance for women and men and forcefully demonstrates the greater pressures women face to look attractive and the price they pay for falling short.

Rhode talks about feminist challenges and responses to appearance through history. This part of the book highlights the tricky implications of being a feminist in a world of appearance. Feminist leaders are especially concerned by the image they project, trying to look neither too "homely" nor too sexy. Rhode emphasizes the media and beauty industry's effects in society, and she decries the lack of regulation regarding beauty products. She also delves behind the economical costs of appearance, again emphasizing the imbalance between men and women's expenditures on their appearance. Marshalling detailed data, Rhode demonstrates the advantages derived from good looks, the costs of beauty practices, and the injustices that arise from assessments based on appearance. She does an excellent job demonstrating how appearance penalizes women, minorities, and people from lower social classes. Rhode also reveals that obese people are particularly vulnerable to appearance discrimination, although obesity is not covered under disability anti-discrimination laws (except for rare cases of morbid obesity).

Having provided the overall framework of the book, this review turns to present an overview of its parts. In the first chapter, Rhode introduces the subject of appearance-based discrimination and the consequences of attractiveness in various spheres of life. She starts by recognizing that although discrimination based on appearance is not the most serious form of bias, "its impact is often far more invidious than we suppose."² Rhode argues that the issue of appearance-based discrimination is compounded by "our failure to recognize that it is a significant problem and one to which law and public policy should respond."³ Since society's obsession with appearance is getting worse, Rhode notes that little improvement from inequalities related to appearance has been made in comparison to other injustices targeted by feminists. The purpose of the book is...