Follow up: Women may earn more after losing weight. Experts say the problem goes much deeper than ‘skinny privilege’

The findings ricocheted around the internet, where the prevailing reaction seemed to be some version of: appalling, yes; surprising, not exactly. Long before researchers tried to quantify the effect, appearance had already been working its way into hiring decisions.

“Employers very rarely say, ‘We hired this person because of how they looked.’ It tends to appear in much more subjective language: somebody seemed more ‘polished,’ had better ‘presence,’ looked more ‘professional’ or simply felt like a better ‘fit,’” Frances Li, founder and director of Biscuit Recruitment, told Moneywise.

The cost of a first impression

After Moneywise published its original story on Diamond’s findings, one reader shared an experience on Threads that was difficult to misinterpret.

“My first corporate job out of college told me they interviewed 3 people before choosing me. Once I worked there for a while, I asked what stood out about me versus the other applicants. No joke, my supervisor said: “You were the only one who fit in the desk,” the user wrote.

It is an unusually blunt example of something that often happens much more quietly. In 2020, a field experiment conducted in Mexico involving more than 3,200 fictitious job applications, found non-obese women received callbacks 29.1% of the time, compared with just 21.3% for otherwise comparable women portrayed as obese. Researchers found no comparable penalty for men.

Li said that in the hiring process, those biases can become especially difficult to detect because subjective ideas about what the ‘ideal’ candidate looks like can easily masquerade as legitimate assessments of competence.

“I think it’s important to distinguish appearance from presentation here. There are jobs where turning up to an interview in appropriate clothing and looking prepared can reasonably form part of the impression you make,” she said, explaining that it’s different from assuming someone is more competent or intelligent simply because they fit a certain image of what success is supposed to look like.

Appearance versus presentation

Of course, appearance and presentation are not quite the same thing.

Hannah Spellmeyer, chief people officer at Slingshot Aerospace, said the way someone shows up can undeniably shape how others perceive their competence and credibility.

“Unfortunately, this includes social norms related to weight, hygiene, and fashion,” she told Moneywise. “While thin appears to be en vogue most everywhere, I can validate that other unexpected social norms are also relevant.”

Spellmeyer saw that firsthand while working in Web3, where the unofficial dress code looked very different from traditional corporate America.

“Everyone wore t-shirts, crop tops, swore relentlessly,” she said. In that environment, showing up in a collared shirt might not have made someone look more professional. It could have had the opposite effect, with colleagues dismissing them as “square.”

The bias beyond the office

The effects Diamond documented did not stop at the office door. Her research also found that single women taking GLP-1s were nearly 29 percentage points more likely to get married or move in with a partner than similar women who had not started the medications.