Sex Stereotyping: Hotel Clerk Fired for “Ellen DeGeneres Kind of Look”

Meet Brenna Lewis (photo). Working the night shift in a smaller town, she was rated an excellent front desk clerk for Heartland Inns. Then she moved to an upscale Des Moines suburb and was promoted to the day shift. She continued to perform well.

But the Director of Operations—a woman named Barbara Cullinan—visited Lewis’ hotel one day. She was upset because this front desk clerk did not have “the Midwest girl look,” but rather, the “Ellen DeGeneres kind of look.” A short time later, Lewis was fired.

As an occasional business traveler, I don’t think of myself as a “male customer,” and the only service I am looking for from the front desk is to check me in promptly and bill me correctly. 

A federal appeals court ruled that Heartland engaged in unlawful sex discrimination. 

Some employers may impose sexual attractiveness standards if sex appeal is reasonably related to the operation of the business. 

Here, we are talking about pro sports cheerleaders, certain types of actresses, models—you get the idea. Not hotel clerks in Iowa, where making fresh coffee rates far above providing men sexual stimulation at the check-in desk.

A nice feature of this court’s ruling was a long list of other court decisions reaching a similar result. You might find this interesting.

EEOC v. Sage Realty Corp. (1981), unlawful to require only female “doormen” to wear uniforms; Laffey v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., (D.D.C.1973), male employees allowed to wear glasses; females required to wear contact lenses; Frank v. United Airlines, Inc., (2000), female flight attendants required to meet lower gender-adjusted weight standard than male counterparts; Price Waterhouse (1991), female business consultant required to “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry”; Back v. Hastings On Hudson Union Free Sch. Dist., 365 F.3d 107 (2004), female teacher expected to delay having more children to establish better continuity of relationships with students and parents; Smith v. City of Salem, Ohio (2004), male firefighter undergoing transition in gender transition unlawfully ordered to take psychological tests to establish fitness for duty; Oncale v. Sundowner (1999), effeminate male subjected to severe harassment by male co-workers, including anal penetration with a bar of soap, unlawful sexual harassment … and others.

This isn’t hard to figure out. Unless an employer’s work requires certain sex-linked characteristics, it’s unlawful to discriminate (or allow co-workers to discriminate) on the basis of gender stereotypes.