Judging By The Cover By Bonnie Gainley Summary

Uncovering Gainley’s Faulty Judgment
In “Judging by the Cover” author Bonnie Gainley argues that employers have the right to discriminate against job applicants who have chosen to decorate their bodies in ways that, in the employers’ estimation, may detract from the applicants’ job performance. She supports this claim by explaining two major points: First, employers have an obligation to hire workers who will favorably “represent the business to its customers” (667), and second, job applicants with potentially offensive decorations, such as tattoos and piercings, have freely chosen to place them on their bodies, so the applicants must take responsibility for the consequences.
Gainley’s argument has considerable “common sense” appeal

to Americans who value free market principles. In fact, she uses an appeal to freedom in her argument, saying, “Freedom of choice is a duel-edged sword – individuals are free to present their desired image, and others are free to react to it. There is nobody to blame but yourself if your set of choices does not match those desired by your preferred employers” (667). It is easy to be persuaded by this forthright endorsement of individual liberty for all concerned, both employers and job applicants, and the argument is valid as far as it goes. But one might ask if Gainley has adequately addressed the complexities of the issue. In fact, there are vexing cases of employer discrimination in which Gainley’s reasoning is revealed to be superficial and short-sighted.
Gainley keeps her argument simple by focusing exclusively on tattoos and piercings of a sort that are easily categorized as either fashion adornments or the insignia of “outlaw” subcultures – in other words, things people (usually young people) do to themselves in order to look “cool” or defy authority.

She writes, for example, that “parents don’t want pre-school teachers waving visible skull or profanity tattoos in front of their small children” (666) and mentions “people who choose to wear rings through their noses” (667). Such examples evoke the rash choices of young people eager to test the tolerance of established authority figures or the habits of gang members to mark themselves in ways designed to intimidate. These convenient examples fit easily into Gainley’s argument. They suggest that when employers discriminate against applicants on the basis of body accoutrements or dress, the victims are predominantly irresponsible or disaffected provocateurs who “get what they

deserve.”
The problem is that this tells only a small part of the story. There are many instances in which the corporate edicts of employers come into conflict with workers whose dress or body accessories are not a consequence of either fashion choices or defiance of legal norms. Consider, for example, the case of Trevor Keezer, who lost his job as a cashier at Home Depot for wearing a pin on his regulation apron that depicted the American flag and stated the motto “One nation under God, indivisible” (Skoloff A9). A company spokesman explained the firing: “This associate chose to wear a button that expressed his religious beliefs. . . . We have a blanket policy . . . that only company-provided pins and badges can be worn on our aprons” (Skoloff A9). According to the news story, Keezer hired lawyers “who say they plan to sue” (Skoloff A9), and one might reasonably ask whether he has a viable case against the corporate giant. In the United States, where the individual’s right to privacy and self-expression is supposed to be protected, should the reach of corporate control extend as far as censoring an expression of piety and patriotism affixed to one’s own body?
While Keezer’s case involves an expression of sentiments that many would regard as “mainstream,” other cases involve employees whose appurtenances are matters of ethnic or religious identity that challenge cultural norms, such as the head scarves of Muslim women, the turbans of Sikhs, or the dreadlocks of Rastafaris.

When employers discriminate against job applicants wearing any of these expressions of religious identity, they are discriminating against the individual’s freedom of religious expression. As Harold Goldner points out, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 indicates that the employer “must accommodate its employees’ religious beliefs so long as the accommodation will not cause an undue hardship on the employer.” There is certainly room for debate in regard to what constitutes an “undue hardship.” Goldner tells of a 1999 court case in New Jersey in which two police officers successfully challenged an officers’ dress code that would have prevented them from wearing beards in accordance with their Muslim beliefs. The plaintiffs made the case that their religious obligation to wear beards posed no “undue hardship” for the police department

(Goldner).
Gainley’s premise that body adornments and distinguishing garments are only fashion accessories, components of a superficial “look” that can be assumed or discarded as circumstances require, is peculiarly American. One might even call it a symptom of a consumer society in which “identity” itself is often thought of as a commodity to be assumed, exploited, and then discarded as fashions change. To many Americans with roots in other cultures this perspective is superficial, not to mention odd. Consider, for example, Indian immigrant Sunita Puri’s discussion of the bindi, the cosmetic dot on the forehead worn by many South Asian women. “I wear my bindis,” she writes, “to demonstrate my adherence to and respect for my culture and religion and the large roles they occupy in my identity and everyday life – not to imitate a pop icon” (64). Puri professes that she was “shocked” when an American acquaintance described her bindi as a “convenient way to sort of like assert an identity. Like, you’re making a statement, but it’s not offensive or anything. It’s actually fashionable” (63-64). Puri was taken aback by this young man’s assumption that her bindi was merely a “convenient” fashion statement.
The problem, of course, is that this young man’s perspective is typical, and it is reflected in Gainley’s argument. One can easily imagine a situation in which a prospective employer might perceive Puri’s bindi as evidence of bad judgment: Here’s a young woman with a proclivity for eccentric cosmetic fads that may offend some customers. According to Gainley, the fault would lie entirely with Puri. She should have demonstrated more discretion and removed her bindi for the job interview. But my question is: Who among Gainley’s reading public is more in need of enlightenment, the job applicant wearing a bindi or the employer and customers who find it threatening? I would suggest the latter, and that Gainley should have directed her argument accordingly.