In the article “Your Appearance, Good or Bad, Can Affect the Size of Your Paycheck,” Stephanie Armour disputes the discrimination based on appearance occurring in America’s modern workforce. Giving example after example, she tries to sell the idea that having a good looking, fit physique and face can improve a future employee’s chance of acquiring a job. She also claims that having a great body and good looks can increase an employee’s pay after earning the new job. But it’s not just having both the looks and body that consumes Armour’s mind. She also covers how height can affect one’s opportunity of achieving promotions and how not wearing makeup can either make or break a person’s employment with a company.

To start off her argument, she tells personal trainer and aerobics teacher, Jennifer Portnick’s, story. She mentions how Portnick does not acquire a job because of her figure. Standing at two-hundred and forty pounds, she did not appear fit according to Jazzercize’s standards. Armour telling this story shows how a company can discriminate based on looks. However, after the story, she claims how multiple stories like Portnick’s raise awareness when it comes to discrimination based on appearance. She brings up how the International Size Acceptance Association attempts to call for a legal protection for appearance based discrimination. However, although there are some circumstances where the ISAA is achieving results, it is almost impossible to receive a full ban on appearance based discrimination without basing people on their race, gender, or age. Employment Lawyer Bill O’ Brien compared this discrimination to the playground, where all the popular kids would act as leaders and choose their own friends. Armour shows concern over this comparison by bringing up how discrimination can really affect one’s paycheck. She brought up the study researched by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which shows how a worker with below average looks can earn around nine percent less than a person with above average looks, and how people with above average looks can earn around five percent more than their average looking co-worker.

After her opening statement about overall job discrimination, she then focuses her attention on overall appearance. She compares looking good to being a team player and having useful technology skills in terms of job importance. However, it’s her references of other people which make Armour’s argument much more persuasive, giving stories of people like Patti Pao, who will not attend a meeting without putting on lipstick, or Matt Kennedy, who now wears glasses and sweeps his hair to the side in order to receiver more job offers. The employers also agree with employees when it comes to appearance. Mindbridge Software now requires formal business apparel while on the job. They have to be clean cut, without any visible piercings or tattoos. Scott Testa’s response infers that the clean cut looks that employees have revolve around a client’s preference of having a more conservative workforce.

Armour then covers height discrimination. She brings up the study from the book Blink, which polled the height of all Fortune 500 CEOs. The average of all the CEOs revolves just less than six feet tall, which is three inches taller than the average man. Dan Okenfuss, public relations vice president at Little People of America, says that “People with dwarfism are capable of doing anything in the workplace.” However, it is inferred that he understands because he mentions that “Companies need leaders to be tall and broad-shouldered.” Along with height discrimination comes weight discrimination. A study done by New York University sociologist Dalton Conley shows that increase in mass in a woman’s results in a decrease in family income and job prestige. Men experience no effect. The most impacting story that Armour shares is one that comes from the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. The bartenders and cocktail waitress are forbidden from gaining more than seven percent of their beginning weigh-in. Those who do will either receive ninety-day unpaid suspensions, or in some cases, be fired. She then brings up Richard Chaifetz’s comment that overweight people have twice as low of a morale as those with healthy weights.

In Armour’s last attempt to prove her point that appearance affects paychecks, she tells the story of a former casino bartender named Darlene Jespersen. Jespersen is known for suing Harrah’s Entertainment because she was fired for not wearing makeup. However, Jespersen almost never wore makeup and had been working for Harrah’s for twenty years. After hearing both cases, the U.S Court of Appeals favored Harrah’s because they had a requirement stating that makeup must be worn. After Harrah’s revamped their company policy, which no longer made makeup mandatory, they then offered Jespersen her job back. She declined, feeling that it was humiliating because in her opinion, “All the women should be 16 and look like the girl next door.”

It is Jespersen’s quote that drives Stephanie Armour to write this article. America focuses on appearance too much, which leads to appearance based discrimination. However, Armour’s arguments prove to be persuasive by giving sound reasoning, statistics, and studies in order to prove that companies do base some of their decision making on appearance. On the other hand, I think she keeps her argument fair by including people who give off opinions that oppose those of Armour’s. This ability to keep the argument fair gives Armour an advantage because attempts to be as unbiased as possible. She lists the facts and lets them prove her point. When she backs up her arguments with proven studies and statistics, how can you say that discrimination is not happening in America’s workforce? Armour’s article successfully proves that companies will look at both credentials and appearance, and that companies have no problem making the right decision based on appearance.