Where only the beautiful dare tread.....

I actually thought this was a joke at first. According to a piece on the Mail Online, and on their own website, the people who brought you 'beautiful dating' are now offering a service for employers and employees on the basis of looks! The Mail explores it from the angle of which countries are getting the most rejections. The UK apparently rates highly in terms of number of rejections.

So, I decided to check out the site. It is a microsite off of the main Beautiful People site that focuses on recruitment for members of Beautiful People. This presumably means you must be a member of the Beautiful People site before you can be considered for the listings/access to recruiters.

Now before anyone labels me a miserable unattractive spinster-esque figure who is only complaining because;

• they are not attractive enough to be on the site
• they have been rejected by the site

Let me assure you that I have never, and nor would I ever, apply/submit my details to something as shallow as this. And, I simply don't care whether anyone finds me attractive or not. I am sure I am some people's cup of tea/beverage of choice just as I am sure there are others that would not find me physically attractive. Now that we have got that out of the way, we can get to the serious issues!
1. This is not the way to encourage business, nor is it the way to get the best candidates. The tagline for the recruitment site is 'An attractive face is always a great first impression for any business', source: Beautiful People.com Recuitment. Now I don't know what readers think but I think that is rubbish! The best first impression for me is and has always been related to manners and professionalism. I don't judge people on their looks, nor do I think someone might be better at their job because of the way they look.
2. How patronising a message, if you consider what is being said. The best way to succeed in business and do well in life is to look good. What kind of message is that for young people, particularly at a time of high unemployment? It amounts to little more than suggesting education, experience and competence mean nothing when competing with a 'looker'.
3. Whatever happened to beauty is in the eye of the beholder? This has the potential to open up complaints of discrimination on many different levels. I appreciate the note on the Beautiful People dating site, that can be found at the bottom of the page in section titled How beautifulpeople.com works that states they are not defining the notion of beauty. They are merely representing what society thinks is beautiful through the voting system. However, only those who are members can vote, and presumably those who are members think they are beautiful (or why else would they be there?!) and have a definition of beauty that probably looks similar to them. Therefore could it be reasoned that people who do not conform to this identikit version of accepted beauty are less likely to be accepted by the current members? It is interesting when you consider it like that rather than seeing it as a democratic vote-in.
4. Professionalism? I also think that I would not want to do business with a company if I knew this was how they recruited their staff. I really hope this site is a spoof or a short lived venture.
5. Body image: this is such a negative and shallow focus. The idea of the body beautiful and that there is one definition of body beautiful is such a bizarre notion. Sadly it is one that seems to be accepted by many. Take our clothes for example; always modelled on tall, thin and often angular women. Anyone who dares be slightly larger is termed a plus-sized model and seen perhaps as niche rather than the norm.
6. The sad trend: this idea of body beautiful as being all important in the workplace is disgusting. There was a piece several years ago that suggested that employers did not want to employ overweight people because they would be lazy. This was covered by the Mail online and was discussing the result of a poll of 200 bosses. This is a disgraceful attitude to take and shows once again that sadly people in society seem to place important on looks over competence.

It is about time we started to challenge that and fight back. Body image is not a tool or means to judge people, there are no excepted rules about beauty and physical image should not be the most important aspect about someone.