A little more than a decade ago it would be uncommon to walk into a place of business and be attended by an employee with locs, multiple facial piercings, or visible tattoos on their face, neck, or arms. The professional appearance of an establishment’s brand included the visual make-up of their employees.
Being well-groomed and as presentable as possible was a goal for all employees, and their appearance was often tied to the demographic the company catered to. Employees with “radical styles,” or styles that weren’t professionally acceptable, were often looked over as a result of their lack of conformity to the prescribed norm.
Nowadays, however, walking into a business and being enamored by an employee’s unique body art is slowly becoming common. This shift in perception is mainly because of the growing popularity in mainstream culture. Pop icons like rapper Lil Wayne, whose music many of the today’s young workforce grew up listening to, maintained his loc’d style and still shamelessly flaunts his growing number of facial tattoos and piercings. Anyone who remembers when Lil Wayne rose to stardom in the early 2000s can also recall the growing popularity of his style, which included locs and facial tattoos. Although we all know that he did not start the trend, after his debut and the commercialization of his style it was common to see artists and entertainers, like D.L. Hughley or Lalah Hathaway, shamelessly showing off their locs.
[Image: Jaguar PS/Shuttershock]
Locs have long been a symbol of Black pride and unity and a repudiation of Eurocentric images of beauty among peoples of African descent. The variety of people who wear them also became more visible through social media giving the public a fresh look at how “kempt” locs could be. Recent acceptance has also opened up employment options for the loc’d — as long as they keep their hair “maintained.”
Monique Grissette-Banks, an human resources manager at LexisNexis with a Master’s Degree and a PhD candidate, mentions that the quality of the work that people can deliver matters more than how they look, much less how they wear their hair. She herself has experienced little negativity in regards to her hair in the corporate culture in which she works.
Tattoos and piercings are also becoming more accepted in the workplace for similar reasons. One in 10 Americans have tattoos and one-third of them are ages 25 to 30. In previous years it was doubtful that anyone with nontraditional piercings or indiscreet tattoos would hold a professional position, but recently entire companies have begun to accept this form of expression. The Ford Motor Company, for example, allows all of their employees, including senior executives, to have tattoos and piercings, as long as they don’t infringe upon safety measures of the company.
It’s common for employees to have visible tattoos and nontraditional piercings in industries such as food service, retail, and jobs where employees aren’t regularly seen by the public, and among entrepreneurs. According to the Wall Street Journal, corporate America is becoming more tolerant of tattoos and piercing, but will always favor their employees discretely concealing them. Vincent Weiner, a tattoo artist in Los Angeles, counts federal judges as clients. Many tattoo owners conceal their skin art at work with clothing or even makeup, and it suits their employers just fine.
Just because perception is changing for some doesn’t mean that it is changing for all. A study by Careerbuilders shows that 37 percent of managers would be hesitant to promote an employee with nontraditional piercings, and 31 percent for visible tattoos. Even today, images of corporate and working class citizens in mainstream media are often clean-cut men and women with no visible tattoos and traditional piercings in their ears. Even the four branches of the military are implementing changes in their policy towards bearers of tattoos. The Army’s new policy, met with negative feedback from current service members, now bans tattoos below the knees or the elbows for new recruits. For service members tattoos have often been a way of commemorating their years of service and loved ones lost.
With general images of America changing through pop culture it is not surprising that retailers like H&M and Barnes & Nobles welcome applicants with unique body art with open arms, or that Apple features nueroscientist and California Institute of Technology professor Christof Koch with his Macintosh Apple logo tattoo on their corporate website.
[Image: Shuttershock]
Another factor to consider is that the individuals doing the hiring process also have their own body art, and are less inclined to turn someone else away because of visible body piercings or tattoos. Many managers and employers are accepting of this personal expression, as long as it doesn’t cause offense to their client base.
Tattoos and piercings were once emblems of sailors, pirates, and other perceived social deviants. Body art were symbols of subcultures that did not necessarily have to prove anything to the status quo. The people created niches through the ever growing body art industry and artist culture, which proves their reluctance to adhere to standards of conformity.
The future of the acceptance of these once deemed radical forms of self expression will also be affected as Generation Xers and Yers make their way into the workforce. The youth are less inclined to adhere to traditional systems, preferring to relish in the positions that allow self-expression. They are more accepting of differences, rather than marginalizing those who are visually different with the possibility of losing a quality employee. “With the rise in graduate unemployment, more and more graduates are reassessing their career options and looking for more entrepreneurial career paths,” says Rajeeb Dey, CEO of Enternships, a company that provides young adults with work experience in start-ups.
This means that young people are the ones creating the jobs that could potentially blossom into the Goldman Sachs, Apple, and T-Mobiles of tomorrow and will set the precedent that the working world will eventually adhere to.