Running Head: RESEARCH ESSAY
Assignment 6: Major Research Essay
Ashley Smith
Professor D. Lucas
LL041: COMMUNICATIONS
March 23, 2016
Running Head: RESEARCH ESSAY
Without even realizing it people are pear pressured to maintain a certain image for
acceptance in their everyday lives. The two readings that I found particularly interesting were,
“Does an employer have the right to control body art of its employees?” by Alan Shanof and
“The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorn. They both can relate in the sense of how the world
perceives body image and especially in women. A lot of people are turned down for a job since
they have body art or appear in a certain way, even if that person possibly could have been the
perfect person for the job. This stops people from being able to express themselves and do what
they want with their own bodies. Girls are expected to service this presentation from the media
on ‘how we are supposed to look’. Judgement has been a problem from the beginning and still
till this day.
I found an article “Women are judged more on appearance when job hunting: Employers
of both sex rate women on their photos but judge men more on the words in the application” The
author focuses around studies of sexism in appearances, which shows how women are generally
judged harsher than men. One of the studies show when viewing a female social media profile
people are often lingered to the picture longer than they would a male photo. It is even common
for employers to get blind-sided by a women’s appearance and will either hire or not hire them
based on physical beauty traits, rather than hiring the person with more experience. This is an
issue that could have a large impact in the workplace, with people not getting jobs because of the
way they look. This means you have to look deeper to see the real beauty in someone than you
can appreciate everything about that person and what they have to bring.
In the article written by Christian Norquist, he explains how people do not feel
comfortable in their own bodies because some of us may not live up to ‘society’s standards’.
Nordqvist describes the meaning of body image as “Body Image reflects how you feel your body
is esthetically and how attractive you perceive yourself.” (Nordqvist, C. (2014, September 17).
“What is body image?”) There can be positive and negative body image pressures, it’s about
