(Un)Lawfully Beautiful: The Legal (De)Construction of Female Beauty

Abstract

Beautiful women are more revered, more desirable, and often times more employable than average-looking women. Despite an everincreasing awareness of women's issues today, little progress has been made to reverse the objectification of women's bodies. This Note asserts that various courts are helping deconstruct the idea that beautiful women should receive preferential treatment in the workplace, simply because they are beautiful. This Note contends that the law progressively is challenging social assumptions that favor traditionally beautiful women by telling employers that they can no longer demand a certain level of female attractiveness in certain contexts. By deemphasizing the general importance of the female body, the law implicitly is doing women of all shapes and sizes, races and skin tones, a favor immeasurable by any scale.