As a young female living in the midwest with many visible body modifications, I've heard every possible excuse from employers as to why they won't hire me due to my appearance. All of which are inaccurate and/or unfair. I could go on for hours listing all of the inadequate reasons I have been turned down, but for the sake of time, I'll list the 3 most common ones I've come across.
1. "It's distracting."
Sure, there are many things that we encounter on any given day that can be labeled as "distracting". Body modifications are not one of those things. Nobody has ever wasted vast amounts of time because they saw a tattoo or a piercing earlier that day. Nobody hasn't been able to get their job done because they were working next to someone with art on their arms or metal in their face.
2. "It's unprofessional."
This is an argument that I've never truly been able to understand. What about body modifications are considered "unprofessional"? Nothing that I can think of. What I have on my skin doesn't affect the quality of the work I can produce. Body modifications do not make a person any more or any less qualified for a job. They do not make me any less professional than someone who has none.
3. "It's not the image we want for our company."
This one is my favorite honestly. This is how employers like to make you think they are making their final decision for the benefit of the company as a whole.
However, rejecting individuals with body mods is no longer, for lack of a better word, "helping" the company, but is instead hurting them. 61% of people in the United States alone have visible tattoos and/or piercings.
This number is growing rapidly. This means that the pool of employers who only want people with "clean skin" to choose from is shrinking. Sooner or later, companies will have to come to terms with the fact that they can no longer hire individuals based on superficial reasons, and instead, will actually have to focus on the qualifications and skills they have.
The world would be a much more efficient place if companies would loosen their ever-tightening grip on their ancient ideals of what people should and shouldn't look like.
Recent years have shown that they have become more lenient, not because they want to, but because they have to. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, it has become somewhat less of an issue for companies to hire those of us who look a little different from everyone else, though it is still difficult. Time has done and will continue to do its job in swaying the minds of those whom we allow to run our businesses. We just have to wait.
