Body Art and Ornamentation in the Workplace

Last reviewed: February 2017

Abstract

Until recently, workplace issues related to employees with body art or ornamentation arose rarely because such adornments were not widespread and there was little need for employers to tolerate them. This situation has changed dramatically, and now between one quarter and one third of the adult population of the United States has some type of ornamentation, which can include tattoos, body piercings, body modifications, and other alterations that significantly change a person’s appearance Employers are finding that they can no longer impose a one-size-fits-all ban on body art and must instead strive for a more nuanced solution.

Overview

For past generations, body modification was regarded with a high degree of skepticism by a majority of polite society. Pierced ears were acceptable and eventually considered normal for women, but it took much longer for them to be acceptable for men. Any other type of piercing that was visible in an office setting invited responses ranging from shock to outright rejection. A person with such a piercing—for example, in the nose, eyebrow, chin—was viewed as being untrustworthy to the point of being frightening; the assumption was that anyone who cared so little for public opinion regarding their appearance must also have no interest in abiding by the laws and basic standards of conduct that regulates society and might be capable of anything, up to and including criminality.

Tattoos were viewed as somewhat less alien than piercings, but certainly were not accepted (Rowsell, Kress & Street, 2013). Those with tattoos were generally thought to be gang members, criminals, members of a biker gang, or some combination of these. Because these stereotypes were so embedded throughout society, to the point where not even fictional characters on television had such ornamentation unless their role was playing a person of questionable morality, employers were loath to hire anyone with visible tattoos, piercings, or body modifications. Employers’ main fear was that having such a person on their staff would send a message to customers that the business or organization was untrustworthy or even dangerous because it chose a person of unconventional appearance to represent it to the outside world.

Employer Restrictions. Some employers, faced with job applicants with body ornamentation, would offer them work in positions that were not customer facing, meaning that they involved no direct, face-to-face interaction with customers. These jobs often involve menial tasks, low pay, and have little opportunity for advancement, since they tend to require one to work in the back office—stocking merchandise, washing dishes, and similar tasks out of the public eye. Other employers would simply reject applicants with visible ornamentation, wishing to avoid any of the trouble that might come with hiring them. Finally, some companies placed restrictions on employees with body ornamentation, requiring them to conceal any permanent alterations they have, such as tattoos or scarring, or to remove piercings while on duty (Owen et al., 2013).

Many people with body ornamentations have been affected by these types of employer restrictions and have felt unfairly singled out for condemnation because of their personal preferences. They see body art and ornamentation as integral parts of their identity, rather than as optional practices that they can adopt or set aside as the occasion requires. In a way, devotees of body ornamentation feel that having to conceal the modifications they have made to their appearance is inauthentic because it represents an act of denial of their true selves. Because body ornamentation is so often met with ridicule and rejection from the outside world, it takes a great deal of commitment and courage to endure these responses from others, and being forced by an employer to conceal traits that one has fought so hard for can seem like too great a demand to be borne (Williams, Thomas & Christensen, 2014).

First Amendment. Some in this situation have sought the protection of the law as a means of avoiding the need to comply with employer restrictions. The legal argument most frequently made is that body ornamentation is a form of self-expression—that is, a type of speech as the term is understood in the Constitution—and that it is therefore protected under the First Amendment, which guarantees that no laws shall be made to abridge freedom of speech. The purpose of the First Amendment is to prevent the government, or those acting on behalf of the government, from regulating what people can and cannot say, as is often the case in dictatorships, where the autocrat in charge of the country outlaws any criticism of his or her policies.

First Amendment contains protections that are not widely understood and that are relevant to the argument over whether the First Amendment protects body modification (French et al., 2016). The First Amendment applies to government restriction of speech, but does not protect private citizens or organizations from regulating what types of speech they will permit. If the owner of a restaurant decides that the establishment will employ only persons without tattoos, the owner does not face any obstacle based on the First Amendment. However, if a government agency, which is obviously acting on behalf of the government, were to implement this rule, there might be a meritorious First Amendment argument to be made.

Related to the issue of First Amendment protection is the confusion many people have about what they are being protected from. The First Amendment protects people from being thrown in jail by the government in retaliation for what they say; it does not protect people from facing the natural consequences of their speech. A private employer is generally free to terminate an employee for violating a company policy prohibiting body ornamentation, just as the employer would be free to fire someone because that person made objectionable or hateful comments in an online forum. Lastly, all of this presupposes that a court would even consider body art and ornamentation to be a form of speech, a question that courts have interpreted in different ways over the years.

Because the First Amendment argument has proven to be so problematic, employees seeking to defend what they believe to be their right to alter their appearance as they see fit have tried an alternative. They have argued that subjecting employees with body art to rules of conduct places an unfair burden on them that other employees are not subjected to and is therefore unfairly discriminatory. This argument appears to refer to the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which requires that the government treat all persons equally.

Once again, the operative word here is “state,” because the Equal Protection Clause, like the First Amendment, applies to conduct by the government, not by private entities. Still, the federal government has passed other legislation in an effort to extend protection against discrimination further into the private sphere, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination by private groups that hold themselves open to the public, such as the restaurants that long ago used to refuse service to people of color. Here, too, those with body ornamentation have generally not been successful in finding shelter under the law. This is because to claim protection under this legislation, a person has to demonstrate that they have been discriminated against based upon their membership in a protected class.

Courts have recognized protected classes based on age, gender, and other characteristics, but not based on body art or ornamentation (Timming, 2015). A factor that tends to operate against the interests of employees with body art is that courts have found that employers frequently have a compelling interest in maintaining their reputations and that the negative stereotypes associated with some body ornamentation could significantly interfere with this effort. Still, even though employers have largely been permitted to restrict body ornamentation in the workplace, some changes have come about because of employee challenges to such restrictions.

Employers have realized that they need to develop official policies regarding body art and ornamentation, to document these policies, and to apply them uniformly to all employees. This is important because failing to do this leaves the employer open to charges of discrimination related to body ornamentation but also to membership in a protected class. For example, if two employees, one male and one female, both possessing prominent facial piercings, worked for the same employer and the employer asked the female employee to remove her piercings while at work but the male employee was not asked to do so, then the woman could claim that she was being discriminated against based on her gender (Armstrong et al., 2014).

Further Insights

Employees with body art can also face workplace resistance based on the assumption that they may be experiencing medical issues such as hepatitis, tetanus, or opportunistic infections because of their ornamentation. Body ornamentation involves procedures that break the surface of the skin, even if only minimally and at a shallow depth, as in the case of tattoos. Other types of ornamentation, such as scarring, branding, and microdermal implants, involve larger or more severe intrusions within the body.

Whenever anything pierces the skin, there is the possibility of an infection being introduced to the patient’s body. In the past, one of the reasons given to try to scare people out of getting tattoos was that they might wind up in a tattoo parlor that used a “dirty needle,” and might thereby contract hepatitis. While this is a possibility even today, businesses that perform procedures related to body ornamentation tend to be closely regulated precisely because of their reputations as being unclean or unwholesome (Ellis, 2015). This does not mean that body ornamentation is without health issues, however.

Recipients of ornamentation can experience compromised immune systems that can leave them more vulnerable to colds, flu, and related ailments. The ornamentation can introduce germs that the body must spend energy fighting, meaning that there are fewer resources available to fight other types of illness. Even in the absence of germs, the body can react to foreign materials such as piercings by attempting to reject them, similar to the way in which a patient’s body can reject an organ that has been transplanted from a donor. The more the body fights the intrusion of the unrecognized material, the more fatigued and weak the person may feel. (McGriff, Prater & Kiser, 2015).

Issues

Body ornamentation in the workplace presents particularly challenging issues when one’s employer is a branch of the U.S. military. This is due, in part, to the association of tattoos with qualities of manliness and physical toughness, which led many servicemen to get tattoos to signal those around them that they were formidable. Sometimes an entire unit would agree to receive the same tattoo as a way of building the bonds of camaraderie between members. More recently, however, the military has begun to change its policies regarding body ornamentation, as part of a long-term effort to transform the image of the armed forces into a more professional organization.

For example, the Marine Corps still allow members to have some tattoos, but they do not permit full sleeves because these are visible when one wears a short-sleeved shirt. Other branches of the military have different, even contradictory, restrictions (Jones & Hobbs, 2015). This has complicated the lives of personnel currently serving in the military, as well as the lives of those who are interested in enlisting.

In addition, the military’s rules about tattoos change over time, often becoming more relaxed when the country has a more urgent need for soldiers, and then returning to a stricter position during peacetime. Since tattoos are not intended to be temporary ornamentations, having military regulations that are so fluid can be problematic—removing tattoos is painful and expensive, to say nothing of the emotional attachment a person may have to them. In contrast, no branch of the military accepts piercings, partly because of their potential as sites of infection and partly because of their potential as sources of injury—having a piercing torn out during battle would be extremely painful.

Finally, much of the philosophy of the military handed down during basic training pertains to the elimination of individual differences between soldiers, making each person an identical, interchangeable, and expendable part of a larger whole. Body art and ornamentation are at odds with this because they tend to reinforce individuality (Chismark, 2013).

Terms & Concepts

Branding: The creation of scar tissue through the application of a heated substance—typically a decoratively shaped piece of metal - to the surface of the skin.

Microdermal: A “foot” is placed under the skin, with a post sticking out through the skin, in this type of jewelry ornamentation. The wearer attaches different adornments to the post, according to his or her mood. The foot cannot be removed without the assistance of a professional.

Migration: Migration is part of the body’s attempt to reject foreign materials such as piercings. The body detects the piercing and responds as it would to an incursion by any type of outside material, by trying to move the material out of the body so that the site can heal. In most cases, piercings are eventually accepted by the body after migrating a short distance.

Scarification: Scarification is a type of body art in which the skin is damaged in a pattern that is intended to be visually appealing. One difficulty with scarification is that the body often tries to heal the damage, which may cause the scars to fade to the point where they are barely visible.

Septum Piercing: A piercing that goes through the part of the nose called the septum, which is the wall that separates the two nostrils from one another. Septum piercings take a variety of shapes, from a straight bar with balls on either end to a gold ring reminiscent of an ox.

Sleeve: A sleeve is a collection of tattoos on one arm that covers most of the skin from the wrist all the way up to the shoulder. Its name comes from the fact that it covers the same area as the sleeve of a long-sleeved shirt would.

Bibliography

Armstrong, M. L., Tustin, J., Owen, D. C., Koch, J. R., & Roberts, A. E. (2014). Body art education: The earlier, the better. Journal of School Nursing, 30(1), 12–18.

Chismark, A. (2013). Oral piercing and body art—21st century realities and safety issues. Journal of the California Dental Hygienists’ Association, 28(1), 16–34.

Ellis, A. (2015). A picture is worth one thousand words: Body art in the workplace. Employee Responsibilities & Rights Journal, 27(2), 101–113. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=102273437&site=ehost-live

French, M. T., Maclean, J. C., Robins, P. K., Sayed, B., & Shiferaw, L. (2016). Tattoos, employment, and labor market earnings: Is there a link in the ink? 82(4), 1212–1246. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=114818625&site=ehost-live

Jones, N., & Hobbs, M. (2015). Tattoos and piercings—are they compatible with the workplace? Nursing & Residential Care, 17(2), 103–104.

McGriff, J., Prater, T., & Kiser, S. B. (2015). Factors affecting the decision to acquire tattoos and other body art. International Journal of Business and Public Administration, (1), 25. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=110096431&site=ehost-live

Owen, D. C., Armstrong, M. L., Koch, J. R., & Roberts, A. E. (2013). College students with body art: Well-being or high-risk behavior?. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 51(10), 20–28.

Rowsell, J., Kress, G., & Street, B. (2013). Visual optics: Interpreting body art, three ways. Visual Communication, 12(1), 97.

Timming, A. R. (2015). Visible tattoos in the service sector: a new challenge to recruitment and selection. Work, Employment & Society, 29(1), 60.

Williams, D. J., Thomas, J., & Christensen, C. (2014). “You Need to Cover Your Tattoos!”: Reconsidering Standards of Professional Appearance in Social Work. Social Work, 59(4), 373–375.

Suggested Reading

Allred, S. (2016). Rejecting the tattooed applicant, disciplining the tattooed employee: What are the risks? Labor Law Journal, 67(3), 475–483. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=118033009&site=ehost-live

Body art: How to ensure that tattoos and piercings don’t spark worker lawsuits. (2013). Legal Alert for Supervisors, 8(184), 3. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=84932617&site=ehost-live

Foltz, K. A. (2014). The Millennial’s perception of tattoos: Self expression or business faux pas? College Student Journal, (4), 589.

Is it fair to ban tattoos at work?. (2014). People Management, 16–17. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=98674785&site=ehost-live

Johnson, S. C., Doi, M. M., & Yamamoto, L. G. (2016). Adverse effects of tattoos and piercing on parent/patient confidence in health care providers. Clinical Pediatrics, 55(10), 915-920.

Phillips, A. (2014). Body piercing and tattooing: A trend and its complications. Practice Nursing, 25(1), 29–31.

Schultz, M., Harvey, D. M., & Bosco, S. M. (2015). Tattoos and body piercings in the workplace. Proceedings for the Northeast Region Decision Sciences Institute, 1–10. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=116281862&site=ehost-live