Too Pretty. Too Plain. How Beauty, Body, and Bias Influence Your Career.

Welcome to Own Your Ambition, the weekly newsletter designed to give professional women the tools they need to be successful. As a former CEO who made it to the C Suite from an entry level, I know first hand what it takes for women to realize their ambition and reach their career goals.

My newsletter this week focuses on how ‘lookism’, discrimination based on your physical appearance, affects your career. I dive into the research behind this, legal protection available, and what you as an individual and your company can to counteract this bias.

This silent form of discrimination has a great impact on women’s careers and goes for the most part unnoticed in companies as a factor that affects hiring, promotions, and performance reviews.

We need to build awareness!

The call came in from a senior male leader at a global financial institution located in New York City. He was interested in having me coach a female manager who was considered to have high potential. She stood out among her peers in a recent leadership program for her intelligence and performance, and the company was ready to invest in her career.

What was clear from the onset was that they wanted me to coach her not only on communication and leadership skills but her appearance. I know, it sucks! But unfortunately, the organization felt her appearance was so critical to her success that it needed to be addressed.

She was perceived as too young, although her chronological age was early 30’s, she looked much younger. Her wardrobe and hair was mentioned. They wanted her to “look more like a leader”. And one look around corporate headquarters, it was obvious what that meant. Tailored black or navy suit, heels, well-coiffed hair, subtle make-up. After all, this was a conservative institution mindful of staying true to its brand.

The executives understood at that time that despite her talent, her looks were an important factor for her to be considered a leader in their institution. I worked with her to improve her communication and overall executive presence. Over the course of our 18 month engagement, she was promoted twice. She is currently one of the top female executives in the company. She learned to fit the mold and that along with her excellent performance positioned her well for leadership. What was clear was that she needed both.

You can be highly competent, articulate, experienced, and respected but if you’re a woman, how you look still affects how far you go.

This is the quiet force of lookism: discrimination based on physical appearance that creeps into everything from job interviews to promotion decisions. For women, the stakes are especially high.

While race, gender, and age discrimination have been recognized and challenged (at least on paper), appearance-based bias still lurks in the background, unspoken but powerful. It doesn’t show up in HR policies or employee handbooks. But it shows up in performance reviews, hiring choices, and the unspoken assessments that shape careers.

Research is clear: attractive women are more likely to be hired and may earn more but they’re also more likely to be perceived as less competent or less serious. Meanwhile, women who don’t meet conventional beauty standards are often underpaid, passed over, or entirely ignored.

A Newsweek survey of 202 hiring professionals revealed that appearance ranks higher than education in hiring decisions. Fifty-seven percent of hiring managers reported that qualified but unattractive candidates are likely to have a harder time landing a job. And economist Daniel Hamermesh, author of Beauty Pays, found that women labeled “unattractive” earn up to 12% less than their peers, regardless of skill or performance.

The Bias Starts Early

For young women entering the workforce, appearance isn’t just about self-expression. It’s about employability. From the resume photo to the “professional” interview outfit, aesthetic presentation becomes a filter long before qualifications are reviewed.

In industries like media, marketing, law, and hospitality, beauty and polish are often mistaken for professionalism. The message is subtle but clear: your competence is judged, in part, by your appearance.

But this scrutiny doesn’t fade with experience. In mid-career, women face a new aesthetic trap: be polished, but not flashy. Be stylish but not distracting. Be youthful, but not girlish.

Fall outside the bounds of this narrow sweet spot, and you may find your leadership potential questioned no matter your actual results.

A 2024 dissertation from Long Island University titled “Leading in Lipstick” studied female school superintendents, top-level leaders who had already proven their capability. Still, they reported persistent pressure to adjust their hair, clothes, tone, and even makeup to be taken seriously. They had to code-switch their appearance just to get a seat at the table.

The Invisible Woman

Later in their careers, women face an even more insidious version of lookism: invisibility.

As men age, they are seen as more authoritative, “silver foxes” with gravitas. But as women age, they’re often dismissed, sidelined, or simply unseen. The same visual cues that elevate a man’s status diminish a woman’s.

Media veteran Libby Purves wrote candidly about this double standard in broadcasting, where older men anchor prime-time shows, and women are quietly replaced. The same bias plays out in boardrooms and leadership pipelines, where beauty remains a silent prerequisite.

Many of the women I interviewed for my book, Not Done Yet: How Women Over 50 Regain Confidence and Claim Workplace Power, admitted that they were marginalized as they showed visible signs of aging despite their history of great performance. Some shared with me that they were panicked about losing their jobs and turned to Botox, fillers and plastic surgery to stay marketable, knowing how difficult it is to get another job at their age. They told me their tales of face lifts, eye lid surgery, neck lifts, which they truly believe bought them a few extra years. Sad but true!

Lookism impacts not just career outcomes, it affects credibility. It undermines women’s confidence. It forces a never-ending performance of physical acceptability on top of the professional one.

Emerging research has begun to quantify the damage.

This Isn’t Superficial. It’s Systemic.

According to a Harvard Business Review study, attractive people are 20% more likely to be seen as competent leaders, even when their performance is identical to their peers.

And an AARP Workplace Equity Study found that 70% of women over 50 have experienced bias linked to age or appearance.

These aren’t rare cases. They’re the norm, just rarely spoken out loud.

But the tide is starting to turn.

Legal Protections Are Slowly Emerging

In 2019, California passed the CROWN Act, making it illegal to discriminate against natural hair textures and styles. As of 2025, 25 states have passed similar legislation, protecting Black women and others who wear braids, locs, twists, or afros at work.

New York City now prohibits discrimination based on height and weight, and other cities like San Francisco, Madison, and Urbana have followed suit. In Michigan, the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act has long included height and weight protections.

Meanwhile, AI-driven hiring tools are now under scrutiny. In NYC, employers must conduct annual bias audits to ensure algorithms don’t replicate human prejudices including appearance-based bias through resume photos or video interviews.

How Women Can Navigate Lookism

While systemic change is slowly unfolding, women still need strategies for navigating this bias.

Here are a few:

Clarify your value and narrative.
Build a professional narrative around your leadership style, achievements, and soft skills. When appearance becomes a distraction, your story helps people refocus on your impact. Identify and communicate your value proposition.

Find mentors and sponsors.
Mentors can help decode the silent expectations around appearance. Sponsors advocate for you in rooms where decisions are made pushing back on shallow assumptions about appearance.

Don’t internalize the judgment.
This is the hardest and most essential step. If you’ve ever been told to “smile more,” “dress the part,” or “look the role,” recognize that this reflects bias, not a lack of professionalism. These superficial comments do not reflect your value unless you let them sabotage your confidence.

Advocate for better policies.
Push your company to include lookism in bias training. Ask for more transparency in performance evaluations. Support inclusive leadership development programs that go beyond image and optics.

What Employers and Leaders Must do

This isn’t just a “women’s issue.” It’s a leadership issue.

Organizations have a responsibility to confront lookism:

• Training: Teach employees to recognize how appearance biases—hair, weight, dress—interact with gender bias .

• Policy: Develop guidelines restricting appearance-based feedback unrelated to job performance.

• Data: Monitor compensation, promotions, and attrition across different appearance profiles.

• Cultural signals: Avoid reinforcing beauty standards in internal comms, recruitment imagery, or leadership role models.

When companies allow appearance to outweigh competence, they lose out on diverse perspectives, strong contributors, and authentic leadership.

If we want real equity, we need to challenge all forms of bias, including those that are aesthetic, unspoken, and deeply ingrained.

That means rethinking who we see as “leadership material.”
It means shifting from “she doesn’t look like a VP” to “she leads like one.”
It means removing the career penalty for simply being seen.

In the End…

Lookism may be subtle, but its impact is deeply felt. From hiring to retirement, it shapes how women are treated, evaluated, and remembered.

As more women speak up, as laws expand, and as companies begin to recognize this bias for what it is, we inch closer to a more just workplace.

Because in a truly equitable world, your success shouldn’t depend on your size, your hairstyle, your outfit, or your age.

It should depend on your work. And that’s enough.