I think that if you have an employee in a public-facing role, and you can demonstrably prove that their hairstyle is having a negative impact on your business or your brand (for instance, a hairdresser), then sure. In that case, you should be able to discipline them if they don’t adjust their hairstyle.
For jobs with no face-to-face public interaction, or for jobs where your hairstyle has little-to-no impact on the performance of your duties or reflection on your employer (e.g. postal worker, chosen at random), then I agree, “clean” is the only standard that should be enforced.
Yeah, I’d be shocked if this reflected a real problem with the algorithm itself. If I use google to find images of american prisons and american malls, I bet I’ll see disproportionate more black people in the former. But that’s not because google is somehow trying to show me that, it’s because America’s justice system has a racist bias towards putting black people in prison and its mass media have a racist bias towards showing white culture rather than black culture (so pictures of public spaces like malls in predominantly black areas are less likely to be taken). The comparison between the images tells us something about western culture, not about google.
The haircolor thing is just stupid. It’s cosmetic and can be changed in short order. The notion of it being unprofessional really needs to die in a fire. Because of these weird social expectations, one thing I greatly look forward to doing in my golden years is dying my hair any fucking color I have a whim to. The SO has been warned.
I also find it rather amusing that you can search for any color of hair with Katy Perry and find a picture of her with that color hair.
Sure, it’s doing all that, too, but that’s largely deciding what bit of text that surrounds the image is most likely to be associated with it. In this case it’s pretty accurately reflecting the fact that there are a lot of discussions about how black hair is frequently labeled “unprofessional.” Or, rather, almost all the discussions about whether a particular type of hair is “unprofessional” are talking about black hair (with a small number talking about unnaturally colored hair).
Would it be ethical to modify the algorithm to show results that are less subjective (Show pictures of people in professional settings without concern for their hair or skin color and assume that hair used by professional people is professional hair (Yes, there’s still another bias there, work with me here)) in hopes of short circuiting the cultural feedback loop where popular ideas propagate without merit? Or would that just fall under “Optimizing search results”?
Languages do not seem to work at all independently of the people who use them. They seem to be symbolic tools which accommodate whatever we implement them to do. So how our language works a process which we participate in.
This is where the con occurs. Do such rules of appearance have any direct correspondence to character of such an activity? Or do they encode arbitrary norms which some accept without analysis? This is why I deeply distrust implicit informal means of communication - they are by design unaccountable, so ersatz “conventions” arise which were never put to a common vote. Making it far too easy for the biases of an invested minority “elite” to derail the course of even crucial cultural institutions.
A family member complained to me once that a doctor he dealt with was a woman (which he could deal with) with a tattoo (which he could not). I pointed out that tattoos and other forms of body modification are often indicative of one’s initiation into society, and that physicians who lack such marks could perhaps be unsuitable, non-adults who were not fully initiated into the responsibilities they should ideally be recognized for. His response was a nervous “… but… that’s not our culture.” Speak for yourself! It may not be your culture, but it certainly is mine. Any such norms, codes, or cultures do not exist apart from our direct participation. The guy is a mason, FFS, so he has no excuse for being ignorant of social ritual.
Eh - well it is. In many places. Something like a Graphic Designer or retail, it probably isn’t a big deal.
Lawyer, banker, accountant, something like that, it doesn’t look professional.
Yes, these are social norms and those norms may change over time.
I personally don’t have an issue with it, but like when I was looking for a job I took my dads advice and finally cut my long hair to a much shorter length. No more pony tail guy. I figured it might be an asset to have the look of a creative, but with my luck I’d fine the one guy or gal who doesn’t like long hair on men and that would be it for me. I wanted to stack the deck in my favor as much as possible.
So again: Entities on the interwebs use photos of colored women (why mostly women, btw?!) in conjuntion with the words “unprofessional” and “haircuts” - while the words “professional” and “haircuts” are being used with pictures of white women (again: why women…?).
If this tells us something then it’s that whoever are those entities, are racially biased (or at least seem so).
Are we really suspecting google of racism for that?
(Or are we only to lazy to look at the articles that go with the photos - which would reveal rather quickly that it’s the written words that go with the pictures which cause the search results).
Yet again lazy writing imho.
But then again you got us read your post (and me to even write up an answer…)
Or am I missing something here?
I work for a major finance firm, and I fight this every single day. I am a fairly clean cut white male. I am former military and do keep my hair very shortly cut and trim. I cannot grow facial hair worth anything, so I am always clean shaven…even after a week of not shaving which saves money to be quite honest.
This said, while I do fit some stereotype about my looks, it drives me nuts that people seem to think dress slacks and a collared button down shirt somehow equate to one individual being able to do a job better than someone else wearing a tee shirt and shorts. What we wear or how we style our hair, or our piercings or ink DOES NOT MAKE US GOOD OR BAD AT A JOB!
Ironically I recall this coming into play on one of the seasons of Inkmaster. One of the contestants that year (Jamie) was criticized for being a tattoo artist and not having any tattoos himself. He argued…so what?! My ability to do good work isn’t predicated on having had it done to me! We do not look at a plastic surgeon and gauge his or her credentials on the amount of plastic surgery they have had done to themselves!!! He was voted off and while they said it was his inferior work, we all could tell it was absolutely because he didn’t have any ink on his body.
I can understand in 2016 and the politically correct let’s not offend anyone world we live in there potentially may be some constraints or at least guard rails on our fashion and personal style choices; however the search results above are ludicrous. The ethnic hairstyles are all quite lovely and the only one that I could consider not less than ideal in an office workplace environment would be the rainbow braids. Alternatively I find nearly all of the “white bread” hairstyles unappealing and tired and not a single one is “professional” but more what I expect to see on a red carpet.
As I said above, it’s not really about search results. It’s about the experiences black women have at work. This is a case where I’m glad google is showing us the truth (the truth of our cultural attitudes, not the transcendent truth of professionalism in hairstyle). I certainly wasn’t shocked to read this, but without it I wouldn’t have thought about how our society judges the hair of black women. It’s one more piece of information about how pervasive the experience of being looked down upon for being black is.
But doing so also perpetuates a society where sexist dress and appearance codes are expected, which arguably causes the very problem that you yourself are confronted with. I strongly suspect that if more people walked out mid-interview and said “Thanks… But I cannot in good conscience work for sexists” that these companies would quickly figure out how to be equitable. They pull it off by exploiting people’s survival anxieties, yet ironically, alliance with such institutions is the biggest liability.
I’m guessing the people here who don’t know what is meant by ‘professional hair style’ are mostly white men. There’s no reason we would know that phrase: we don’t have hair styles, we have hair cuts. It won’t ever be a judgement on our hair, as long as we do get it professionally cut. If we don’t date women who have naturally tight curls, it’s not something we would hear in our personal lives.
Just because you and I don’t experience this, doesn’t mean the phrase ‘professional hairstyle’ is not instantly understood by the people whom it is weaponised against. Google, wittingly or not, is participating in that weaponisation. This algorithm needs adjustment.
well, we could also say the algorithm has done a bad job, is buggy or underdeveloped.
when the users of a system do not find themselves represented by that system then they are clearly not getting useful results.
a search algorithm shouldnt simply be a popularity contest, it should provide a range of potentially useful information. and, if google and alphabet are satisfied with only presenting information useful for white people, then what?
( very curious what searching in other languages for haircuts turns up. my spanish is rusty. i mostly get pictures of haircutting tools, and some white women. )
[quote=“popobawa4u, post:48, topic:76212”]
Languages do not seem to work at all independently of the people who use them. They seem to be symbolic tools which accommodate whatever we implement them to do. So how our language works a process which we participate in.[/quote]
I do try - for instance, I’m currently trying to push back against “essential” meaning “very important” or “mandatory” instead of “having to do with the essence of,” but I haven’t noticed any change of usage thus far.
My own opinion is that we each have an individual culture (as oxymoronic as that phrase is) - if I claim that something is part of “our” culture, I’d be speaking for other people who have not chosen me to speak for them.
This is a good point. I feel like the results are useful because they are useful to me - that is they made me aware of a problem I wasn’t really aware of. For a person who actually wants to know how to try to make their hair seem more professional in a world were they already know they are judged for the hair they were born with the results are probably a little depressing, but not much else.
This is the result of A/B testing - the tyranny of the majority (the majority of dollars / the majority of cultural influence, not the majority of people).
So while I was seeing this an a lesson in how black women are judged, that’s just an example of google serving up what I want. This would be an interesting thing to study, to me. I wonder if you polled people about how useful google was to find information they wanted if you’d actually see different satisfaction ratings from different genders, ethnicities, etc. How much is google tailored for young to youngish, white, english-speaking men?
ETA: And a tip of the hat to @celesteh who also pointed out the search engine was part of the problem (just in a way that I didn’t immediately get).
