Weighing the value of femininity: casino cocktail servers and personal appearance standards

ABSTRACT This article examines the intersections of femininity, labor, fatness and maternity. Specifically, this article explores Atlantic City’s casinos’ treatment of women cocktail servers, arguing that personal Appearance Standards (PAS) are a site of conflict that demonstrates the importance of expanding how femininity is embodied and valued in the workplace. Through a close reading of promotional materials, media coverage, and public lawsuit materials, our study reveals how workers’ bodies and the services they provide are (de)valued through the application of patriarchal feminine standards. Plaintiffs’ accounts demonstrate the push they experience to conform to a weight-based imagining of feminine attractiveness. The expectation of simultaneously providing drink service and entertainment creates an employer demand for hegemonically feminine workers. The result is a rejection of servers whose feminine growth exceeds the normative conceptualization of casinos’ seductive femininity. Gaps in legal protections as well as limited applications of existing discrimination laws continue to enable employers’ overreach into the management of women workers’ bodies.