Abstract
AbstractIn business as elsewhere, “ugly people” are treated worse than ”pretty people.” Why is this so? This article investigates the ethics of aesthetic injustice by addressing four questions: 1. What is aesthetic injustice? 2. How does aesthetic injustice play out? 3. What are the characteristics that make people being treated unjustly? 4. Why is unattractiveness (considered to be) bad? Aesthetic injustice is defined as unfair treatment of persons due to their appearance as perceived or assessed by others. It is plays out in a variety of harms, ranging from killing (genocide), torture, violence, exclusion (social or physical), discrimination, stigmatization, epistemic injustice, harassment, pay inequity, bullying, alienation, misrecognition, stereotyping, and to prejudice. The characteristics that make people treated unjustly are (lack of) attractiveness, averageness, proportion, and homogeneity. Furthermore, prejudice, psychological biases, logical fallacies, and unwarranted fear of disease are some reasons why unattractiveness is (considered to be) bad. In sum, this study synthesizes insights from a wide range of research and draws attention to aesthetic injustice as a generic term for a form of injustice that deserves more systematic attention. Having a definition, description, and explanation of the concept makes it easier to target the problems with aesthetic injustice. As the business world is an arena of ubiquitous aesthetic injustice business ethics can take the lead in identifying, explaining, and addressing the problem.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Law,Economics and Econometrics,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous),General Business, Management and Accounting,Business and International Management
Reference143 articles.
1. Ablon, J. (1995). ‘The elephant Man’as ‘self’and ‘other’: The psycho-social costs of a misdiagnosis. Social Science and Medicine, 40(11), 1481–1489.
2. Abubakar, A. M., Anasori, E., & Lasisi, T. T. (2019). Physical attractiveness and managerial favoritism in the hotel industry: The light and dark side of erotic capital. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 38, 16–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2018.11.005
3. Adomaitis, A. D. D., Raskin, R., & Saiki, D. (2017). Appearance discrimination: Lookism and the cost to the American woman. The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal, 2(6), 73–91. https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/sfd/vol2/iss1/6
4. Allen, E. (2022). Jess Weiner and the dove real beauty campaign: selling feminism for profit or social change? Women Leading Change: Case Studies on Women, Gender, and Feminism, 6(1), 18–37.
5. Anýžová, P., & Matějů, P. (2018). Beauty still matters: The role of attractiveness in labour market outcomes. International Sociology, 33(3), 269–291.
Cited by
3 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献