An Examination of Lookism in Scholarly Literature

The aim of this paper is to examine scholarly literature to identify how lookism has been defined and studied. A qualitative theme and content analyses were used to assess scholarly literature on lookism. The search resulted in 43 scholarly works with 36 written in English. Examining the scholarly literature on lookism suggests it: i) is an emerging concept in scholarly literature; ii) is a form of discrimination, particularly in the workplace; ii) includes a variety of physical features (e.g. age, facial symmetry, tattoos); iii) is multicultural; iv) supports popular literature that these biases exist (e.g., Ayto, 1999), and v) needs to be studied further to fully understand and define it. Lookism is a significant topic that apparel and textile (AT) researchers can utilize their expertise to examine further, defining lookism further, examining and comparing lookism in varying cultural contexts, and seeking reliable and valid methods to research lookism.