Marshal Cohen, a senior industry analyst with the NPD Group states that it is necessary for clothing companies to only hire people that portray the company image. He believes that having a "walking billboard" would help create an environment that attracts people. Cohen thinks that by having "good-looking" people sell "good-looking" clothes, more people would want to buy the products. This method of only hiring people based off their image, evolved from the competitive retail environment between different clothing companies.With many different clothing companies trying to go for the same image, they will do whatever they can to give their store an edge over another.
I disagree with Cohen's argument, I think portraying an image is less important than selling the actual product. Cohen states "A guy wants to go hang out in a store where he can see good-looking gals.", NO. When I walk into a store, I am looking for a clothing item that I am interested in buying. If I found a jacket I like, the look's of one of the employees in the store is not going to affect my liking of the jacket. Yes, it wont hurt to have a pretty face in the store, but that is not the reason why I would go into a store in the first place. Being a casual shopper, I only expect a store's employee to be kind; not to have the face of an angel. Instead of worrying about how their employee's look, they should focus on how their clothes look and try to match their clothes with their customers fashion sense. If a store were to have horrible looking looking clothes, but beautiful looking workers, they still would not make any money, but if it was the other way around, they would still make tons of profit.
If a person is "ugly" it is often something that they cannot control. People should be hired for a job based on their abilities and skills, not the way they look. If many of our companies were to adopt this method, they would not go very far. Having experienced workers rather than employees that only "look good", would only project the company to new heights, not decrease their profit. Not only does this method discriminate against potential workers that do not have "the look", but it would also discourage the customers that also do not have it. This method can often majorly lower one's self-esteem. The method should only be used for jobs that absolutely require a person to be good-looking. You do not have to have a pretty face to work the cash register, talk to people, and fold cloths.
Not only might people think this method is immorale, a company that uses this method of hiring employees will probably have to face legal issues as well. For example, Abercrombie and Finch was charged with racial discrimination, for hiring only foot-ball playing or preppy caucasion employees. An ex Abercrombie and Finch employee states, "You don't see any African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and thats the image that their portraying and looking for." It is said that any people of color that were hired in Abercrombie, all worked in the stock room where they could not be seen. We come from a country of equality, for a clothing company to portray racial discrimination is highly unacceptable. People cannot hire control how they look, just like how they cannot control the color of their skin. It is said that Abercrombie wants to portray an "All American look.", an "All American look" consists of people of all different colors. Employee's were also told to ask anyone that fits the "image", to work for their store. Hiring people for their looks not only brings legal problems to the company itself, but also promotes racial stereotyping in our society. It is not necessarily illegal, but it discriminating based off sex, age, or ethnicity is. This country have already been fighting for racial equality for hundreds of years, lets not segregate the population between "attractive" and "ugly".
To judge whether or not a person is "attractive" is all the matter of opinion. Different people have different opinions of one's beauty. Where do employers come off telling a person that they are unattractive? Employers feel like they should hire good-looking people in order to attract people that also want to look good, but it is also safe to say that the employers can care less about how "unattractive" people feel towards this issue. They use this method in hopes of getting more customers and more profit, but their profits will obviously decline with many lawsuits that are put against them. By hiring a whole variety of people, it makes sense that they will also have a whole variety of customers. By trying to portray the image of one ethnicity or one look, they will only attract customers that fall into that specific category. The continuation of this method of hiring employees might trigger more establishments to also use this method, which would ultimately damage our economy greatly. I believe that the government should ban this hiring method, because it consists of racial discrimination. This method is illegal and immoral.
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