What Is Lookism?
Lookism is appearance-based prejudice or discrimination: the unequal evaluation or treatment of people because of physical appearance, perceived attractiveness, body size, facial features, age-related appearance, grooming, or other visible characteristics. It operates through judgments, expectations, institutional norms, and decisions that attach social value to how a person looks. Appearance discrimination can affect hiring, promotion, education, service encounters, intimate relationships, and everyday participation. Its psychological consequences may include vigilance about being judged, diminished belonging, stress, self-consciousness, and restrictions on opportunity. These outcomes depend on the type of mistreatment, its frequency, the social setting, and available support. Jones et al. (2024); Mason and Midtgaard (2026).
The object of research is a social process. A person can have positive body image while being discriminated against; a person can experience intense body dissatisfaction without encountering a documented discriminatory decision. The distinction matters because effective responses must address the evaluator, the organization, and the social environment as well as individual distress. The empirical literature uses overlapping expressions including attractiveness bias, beauty premium, appearance-based stigma, aesthetic discrimination, weight discrimination, and lookism. These refer to partially overlapping mechanisms, populations, and outcomes, and studies often operationalize them differently.
Lookism also requires a distinction between evaluative preference and consequential exclusion. People may notice or prefer particular appearances in ordinary social perception. Discrimination becomes particularly consequential when appearance, without a relevant justification, influences access to employment, education, fair treatment, or opportunities to exercise autonomy. The ethics of particular decisions depends on the context, the decision-making criteria, the interests affected, and the social position of the person evaluated. Mason (2023).
Scientific Foundations: Attractiveness Stereotypes and Social Evaluation
The attractiveness halo
The classic physical-attractiveness stereotype is the tendency to infer favorable personal attributes from appearance. In a foundational experiment, Dion, Berscheid, and Walster documented the expectation that attractive targets would possess more desirable traits and experience more favorable outcomes. This tradition is often summarized as the “what is beautiful is good” effect. Dion et al. (1972).
The evidence is more specific than the slogan. Eagly and colleagues' meta-analytic review found that the stereotype varied substantially by the inferred characteristic: judgments related to social competence were more affected than judgments about integrity or concern for others. Thus, a favorable impression on one dimension does not establish an actual difference in competence, character, or behavior. Eagly et al. (1991).
Langlois and colleagues synthesized multiple research traditions in 11 meta-analyses. They found measurable agreement in attractiveness judgments and differences in how targets were judged and treated. Their findings also suggested differences in observed social behaviors, but research design and social feedback complicate attempts to separate initial treatment from subsequent development. Attractiveness judgments combine some shared patterns with cultural, historical, and individual variation. They are judgments made by observers, rather than objective assessments of personal worth. Langlois et al. (2000).
Stereotypes, expectancy, and feedback loops
Appearance can become a shortcut in decisions under uncertainty. An interviewer may interpret the same answer as confident when presented by a person viewed as attractive and as presumptuous when presented by another applicant. The inferred competence can then influence opportunities, encouragement, and evaluation. Repeated feedback may alter self-confidence or behavior over time, making later associations appear to reflect fixed personal characteristics. Such pathways are theoretically plausible; establishing them requires longitudinal designs that separate initial evaluator bias, opportunity, and later change.
Lookism can be interpersonal, organizational, or institutional. Interpersonal lookism appears in insults, exclusion, assumptions, and preferential treatment. Organizational lookism appears in discretionary hiring and promotion practices or informal appearance standards. Institutional lookism involves rules and arrangements that systematically reward particular appearances or disadvantage other people. A systematic review of 47 studies on hospitality and tourism workplaces organized these dynamics across individual, job, organizational, and institutional levels. The reviewed literature linked lookism to career outcomes, job attitudes, and psychological or physical health, but much evidence came from particular industries and observational designs. Jones et al. (2024).
How Appearance Discrimination Happens
Beauty premiums, appearance penalties, and unequal scrutiny
A beauty premium refers to a measured advantage associated with being rated more attractive, whereas an appearance penalty describes disadvantage associated with being rated less attractive or with possessing a stigmatized visible feature. The advantage can occur through favorable first impressions, access to interviews, preferential social feedback, or customer-facing expectations. The penalty can arise through dismissive treatment, reduced credibility, rejection, and more stringent scrutiny. Appearance ratings themselves are culturally and contextually produced measurements, so research should document who rated the targets and what characteristics were varied.
The employment meta-analysis by Hosoda, Stone-Romero, and Coats found an overall weighted mean standardized effect of approximately d = 0.37 favoring more attractive targets in experimental job-related judgments. The result reflects the average across a particular body of experimental studies rather than a universal difference in hiring probability or pay. It also cannot be assigned to every population or industry. Importantly, the review reported bias among professionals as well as students and found that supplying more job-relevant information did not eliminate the average attractiveness effect. Hosoda et al. (2003).
Appearance requirements and aesthetic labor
Aesthetic labor describes organizational practices that recruit, present, or manage employees partly for the appearance and style desired by an employer. Front-facing positions can involve uniform rules and genuine task-related requirements, yet discretionary standards such as looking youthful, polished, slim, fashionable, or conventionally attractive can become routes for bias. The scientific question is whether a requirement is relevant, consistently applied, proportionate, and independently justified by the work. Employers can also translate anticipated customer preferences into discriminatory selections. Hospitality research identifies aesthetic labor practices as an important pathway through which appearance-based inequality is reproduced. Jones et al. (2024).
Facial appearance, body size, hair, and visible difference
Lookism spans different types of visible difference but these experiences should be evaluated separately. Weight stigma involves societal stereotypes and treatment associated with body weight. Age-related appearance can trigger assumptions about competence, vitality, or social value. Racialized hair and facial features can be evaluated through racial stereotypes. Scars, skin conditions, facial differences, medical treatment effects, and disabilities may lead to staring, intrusive questions, avoidance, or unfair assumptions. These contexts overlap, but each has distinctive histories, institutions, and protections. A comprehensive account must examine those specifics instead of merging all appearance judgments into one scale.
Appearance discrimination can be intensified at intersections of sex, race, gender expression, disability, age, and economic position. The same hairstyle, clothing, facial feature, or body type may be interpreted differently depending on who possesses it. The need is for context-sensitive research with meaningful comparisons; the presence of intersectionality alone does not establish the magnitude of any particular interaction.
What Research Shows About Employment
Experimental evidence in selection decisions
Experimental vignette, photograph, résumé, and video studies can vary perceived appearance while holding recorded qualifications constant. This approach identifies whether an evaluator responds differently to otherwise equivalent profiles. It cannot automatically predict actual lifetime earnings or promotion trajectories. The classic meta-analysis supplies convergent evidence that appearance can influence job-related judgments. Hosoda et al. (2003).
A 2024 factorial survey experiment used synthetic video editing to change facial appearance and gender cues while keeping other features of fictitious applicant videos constant. In a sample of 493 respondents with personnel responsibilities, more attractive applicants received more favorable competence ratings and interview invitations on average. The advantage differed by gender and occupational context: in that experiment, male candidates benefited more consistently, whereas the measured advantage for female candidates depended on the job type. These findings demonstrate a bias in the tested hypothetical setting, rather than proving that all real hiring processes behave the same way. Kühn and Wolbring (2024).
Decisions beyond recruitment
Appearance may affect whose contribution is believed, who receives mentoring, whose mistakes are excused, and which employee is presented as representative of a brand. Such decisions compound if initially favored people gain the experience and visibility later used to justify additional opportunities. Organizational researchers therefore study attractiveness together with gendered job expectations, customer contact, recruitment standards, organizational culture, and supervisory discretion. However, many studies examine perceptions or self-reports, and their findings should not be narrated as established causal effects on wages or promotions. Jones et al. (2024).
When appearance is genuinely relevant
Some tasks involve specific and demonstrable functional demands, safety equipment, or presentation requirements. Their relevance must be evaluated on the job's actual demands. Customer taste, assumptions about a person's social appeal, and inherited ideas about a “professional look” may be poor proxies for performance. Ethical analysis considers the consequences to applicants, the fairness of the selection process, and whether appearance standards reproduce disadvantages among already stigmatized groups. Mason and Midtgaard (2026).
Psychological Effects of Lookism
Stress, anticipated rejection, and vigilance
A person who has repeatedly experienced appearance-related mistreatment may begin monitoring their presentation and anticipating exclusion. Anticipated discrimination can shape decisions about social events, interviews, dating, and health care. The resulting vigilance consumes attention and may make ambiguous encounters feel threatening. Anticipation is a psychological process that warrants investigation on its own; the absence of a newly observed insult on a particular day does not mean the earlier experience has ceased to matter.
A cross-cultural program of research developed a Fear of Lookism Scale and examined its functioning in Japanese and U.S. samples. Its dimensions concerned anticipated exclusion or devaluation, romantic rejection, and insult. The work provides initial evidence that fear of appearance discrimination can be measured and studied across these contexts, but a new scale and correlational associations do not amount to a clinical diagnosis or a universal estimate of the prevalence of lookism. Ai et al. (2025).
Self-esteem, belonging, shame, and loneliness
Mistreatment can convey a message that a person's social standing is conditional on appearance. This can erode belonging, encourage withdrawal, and reinforce appearance-related shame. Some people respond by trying to satisfy the imposed standard; others resist it or invest in identities and relationships less dependent on appearance. Outcomes vary with social support, the salience of appearance to self-concept, prior experiences, and the degree to which a person internalizes negative judgments.
Evidence from discrimination research beyond lookism provides a useful mechanism framework. Pascoe and Smart Richman's meta-analysis associated perceived discrimination with poorer psychological and physical health, including pathways involving stress responses and health behavior. More recent experimental meta-analysis identified immediate mental-health effects from manipulated discrimination exposures. Because those syntheses include multiple discrimination categories, they support broader stress mechanisms but should not be represented as precise lookism-specific effect estimates. Pascoe and Smart Richman (2009); Emmer et al. (2024).
Body image and self-objectification
Persistent appearance evaluation may increase the tendency to inspect one's body as an object judged by others. It can also amplify comparisons, checking, pressure to change visible features, and the gap between an experienced self and an imagined acceptable appearance. These are related psychological constructs rather than inevitable consequences of discrimination. Someone can reject appearance norms while still feeling exhausted by discriminatory treatment. Conversely, intense dissatisfaction can arise through comparison or other experiences without evidence that a discriminatory decision occurred.
A careful assessment asks separately about exposure to unfair treatment, beliefs about one's appearance, avoidance or monitoring behaviors, and functional impact. This preserves distinctions between the social cause, the subjective appraisal, and potential clinical problems. The broader scientific framework is described in the Body Image and Appearance Psychology research chapter.
Mental health, causality, and individual variation
Associations between appearance-related stigma and symptoms such as anxiety, depressed mood, sleep disturbance, and social withdrawal can involve multiple directions. Preexisting anxiety can increase sensitivity to negative cues; discrimination can also create or intensify distress; a third factor may affect both. Research using repeated measures, comparison groups, and experimental exposures offers stronger tests than a single self-report survey. Psychological consequences should be evaluated in relation to frequency, severity, resources, and structural context, not inferred from a person's appearance.
Weight Stigma as a Related but Distinct Domain
Weight stigma is a particularly studied form of appearance-related devaluation, encompassing stereotypes, mistreatment, and exclusion related to body size. Internalized weight bias occurs when people apply weight-based negative stereotypes to themselves. These are analytically different: external mistreatment is an interpersonal or institutional event, while internalization concerns self-evaluation. A meta-analysis including 149 subsamples found greater weight-bias internalization associated with worse psychosocial outcomes and multiple health-related correlates; the authors emphasized that the evidence was predominantly cross-sectional, with more limited prospective results. Romano et al. (2023).
Body weight is neither a measure of virtue nor a psychological diagnosis. Analyses of lookism should avoid treating obesity, thinness, muscularity, disability, age, or visible difference as evidence of pathology. Weight-stigma interventions, clinical eating-disorder care, and the psychological experience of broad appearance prejudice have overlapping but distinct research questions.
Children, Adolescents, and Social Development
Appearance-related teasing and exclusion can occur in school, online, and peer relationships. Adolescence involves changing bodies, increasing sensitivity to peer evaluation, and expanding social comparison opportunities. Bullying is a pattern of harmful interpersonal behavior and requires attention to repetition, power, and setting; a single unwanted appearance comment can be harmful while still needing different classification and response.
Visible differences related to congenital conditions, injuries, dermatological conditions, and medical treatment may alter the nature of peer interactions and expose some young people to intrusive attention. A systematic review of psychosocial interventions for children and young people with visible differences identified 24 studies but judged most at high risk of bias. The evidence supports targeted support needs while demonstrating why confident claims about the superiority of a specific intervention would be premature. Waite et al. (2024).
Supporting children requires both individualized care and changes to group behavior. Adults can address appearance-focused harassment, create predictable reporting and response systems, model respectful language, and avoid teaching that a target must change their appearance to earn safety. Prevention programs should assess peer behavior and school climate as well as individual confidence.
Digital Appearance: Profiles, Photographs, and Algorithms
Digital environments place photographs and short-form visual presentations near judgments about friendship, desirability, employability, and visibility. Filters, retouching, camera angles, recommendation systems, and algorithmic rankings can alter which appearances are repeatedly encountered. The resulting environment may magnify appearance comparison and the impression that narrow ideals are ordinary. However, an association between online exposure and body dissatisfaction does not establish that a particular algorithm caused discrimination.
Digital hiring also creates a methodological problem: photographs and videos may introduce appearance cues into evaluations that should depend primarily on qualifications. The synthetic-video hiring experiment illustrates that controlled changes to visual presentation can generate different judgments even when application information is held constant. It is an experimentally useful approach with its own limitations concerning realism, sample composition, and generalization. Kühn and Wolbring (2024).
Image-generation tools introduce the possibility of constructing idealized or homogenized faces at scale. Research must specify whether it is studying perceived realism, beauty-standard exposure, discriminatory decision-making, or mental-health outcomes. These are different dependent variables. Audits should examine source images, demographic representation, prompts, selection criteria, and the possibility that automated rankings reproduce human aesthetic preferences. The Social Media and Body Image article examines the broader online comparison literature.
Race, Gender, Disability, and Other Intersecting Contexts
Appearance has social meaning because people interpret it through cultural histories, gender norms, racialization, and ideas about ability and age. Hair texture, skin tone, facial features, body size, scars, or assistance devices may be read as markers of group identity, even when these interpretations are mistaken. Lookism research should therefore specify what visible features are being evaluated and what social stereotypes are attached to them.
Intersectional research investigates whether being judged through more than one social category changes the treatment a person receives. For example, a hairstyle requirement may be framed as neutral while disproportionately burdening particular racialized hair textures. Beauty expectations may also be stricter for one gender in one type of occupation and for another gender in a different occupation. The 2024 synthetic-video study found precisely this sort of context dependence in hypothetical hiring assessments. Kühn and Wolbring (2024).
Visible disability, skin variation, or facial difference should never be equated with distress or reduced competence. Some individuals report significant social exclusion; others have strong body appreciation and well-being. Research must allow for this heterogeneity and should include participants' own definitions of meaningful outcomes rather than assuming conformity to beauty norms is the desired endpoint.
Research Methods and Measurement
Controlled judgments and field outcomes
Experimental studies manipulate appearance cues while holding other information constant. Outcomes may include attractiveness ratings, perceived competence, interview recommendations, allocations of resources, or decisions made in simulated interactions. These studies have stronger internal control, but participants may not behave identically in real institutions. Field studies examine actual applications, employment outcomes, service encounters, or reported incidents; they may capture real-world context but face confounding from qualifications, opportunity structures, and selection into settings.
Self-reported experience and anticipated discrimination
Surveys ask about unfair treatment, perceived reasons for it, stereotype endorsement, body image, and distress. Measures should separate frequency from intensity, past experiences from feared experiences, and appearance-specific factors from broader social anxiety. The Fear of Lookism Scale provides an example of an emerging appearance-specific instrument tested in Japanese and American samples. Validity for those samples does not automatically establish equivalence across all ages, languages, or cultural communities. Ai et al. (2025).
Longitudinal, qualitative, and organizational designs
Longitudinal studies can assess whether earlier appearance-related mistreatment predicts later changes in well-being after accounting for earlier mental-health status. Qualitative interviews clarify context, agency, perceived meaning, and the ways appearance rules are negotiated in everyday life. Organizational audits can examine whether selection criteria are explicit, job-related, and consistently applied. High-quality programs combine methods because no single indicator captures perceived discrimination, actual inequitable treatment, and its downstream consequences simultaneously.
Common threats to validity
Important limitations include convenience samples, culturally narrow attractiveness ratings, retrospective self-report, insufficient adjustment for socioeconomic factors, small experiments, inconsistent definitions, and publication bias. General discrimination meta-analyses are informative but cannot substitute for appearance-specific estimates. Aesthetic judgments may be influenced by photography, expression, lighting, grooming, race, and other correlated cues. Researchers must identify which features were actually manipulated and avoid describing composite judgments as a purified causal effect of physical attractiveness.
Clinical Boundaries: Distress, Anxiety, and Diagnosis
Lookism is a social phenomenon, while fear of appearance judgment, body shame, and body dissatisfaction are psychological experiences. None by itself establishes a psychiatric disorder. Persistent distress, avoidance, impaired functioning, or substantial depressive or anxiety symptoms may warrant professional assessment. Assessment considers actual mistreatment and practical constraints as well as the person's thoughts, behaviors, and safety.
Body dysmorphic disorder involves a specific clinical pattern of preoccupation with perceived defects or flaws in appearance accompanied by repetitive behaviors or mental acts and clinically significant distress or impairment, according to the diagnostic framework used by a qualified clinician. Its evaluation involves symptom history, insight, repetitive checking or camouflage, and differentiation from other conditions. Appearance-related social anxiety may center on negative evaluation in social situations. Eating disorders have their own diagnostic criteria and care pathways. A person can experience appearance discrimination with none of these diagnoses, and any of these diagnoses can occur in the absence of documented discrimination.
Clinical practice should therefore resist two errors: assuming that external mistreatment is merely distorted perception, and treating ordinary or socially imposed appearance concerns as pathology. The OCD and Body Dysmorphic Disorder: Connection and Treatment article covers OCD-related diagnostic boundaries. People with severe deterioration in functioning, self-harm thoughts, or suicidal thoughts require prompt qualified clinical assessment and appropriate local crisis resources; the need for safety care is determined by the symptoms, not by appearance.
Reducing Lookism: Individual, Organizational, and Public Approaches
Transparent selection and accountable decisions
Institutions can reduce opportunities for appearance-based bias by specifying job-relevant competencies before reviewing candidates, using structured interviews, documenting reasons for decisions, and auditing selection outcomes. Work samples and consistent performance criteria may help shift attention to actual capabilities. Some methods, such as removing photographs from applications, reduce access to a particular cue at one stage; their broader effectiveness depends on implementation and on biases that arise later. Organizations should empirically evaluate interventions rather than infer that a policy succeeded simply because it was adopted.
Appearance standards and inclusion
Employers should identify what each appearance requirement accomplishes, whose interests it serves, and whether a less exclusionary alternative can meet a legitimate goal. Training can help staff recognize stereotyped competence inferences, but structural decision rules, complaint channels, review of outcomes, and leadership accountability provide additional avenues for change. A systematic review of hospitality lookism shows why a multilevel approach fits the phenomenon better than individual attitude change alone. Jones et al. (2024).
Supporting people who experience discrimination
Psychological care can validate the experience of mistreatment, assess symptoms, strengthen social support, and address distress-maintaining avoidance, shame, or harmful self-beliefs. Cognitive behavioral strategies, self-compassion practices, and social support may be relevant to specific problems; these should be selected by the person's needs and the evidence for the targeted condition. Therapy does not replace fair hiring, access to services, anti-harassment responses, or institutional remedies. The intervention evidence for children with visible differences remains heterogeneous and frequently at risk of bias. Waite et al. (2024).
Fair treatment in schools and communities
Schools can establish clear responses to appearance-based harassment, monitor repeated peer mistreatment, and teach social norms that respect bodily variation. Communities can challenge the assumption that someone's age, hair, skin, body shape, or disability predicts competence or value. Interventions should be assessed using measures of exclusion, safety, participation, and well-being, rather than appearance satisfaction alone.
U.S. Employment Law and Appearance Discrimination
In the United States, appearance-related treatment can intersect with federal employment protections. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission explains that Title VII protections concerning race and color can cover race-associated hair texture, skin tone, and facial features, and that grooming standards may create discriminatory effects. Religious dress and grooming practices also may require accommodation under applicable legal standards. Disability-related decisions may implicate the Americans with Disabilities Act. EEOC: Race and Color Discrimination; EEOC: Religious Garb and Grooming; EEOC: Americans with Disabilities Act.
General appearance or attractiveness alone is not a universally protected category under federal employment law; state, local, contractual, and context-specific rules can create additional obligations. The legal analysis depends on the jurisdiction, the protected characteristic, the employer, and the decision being challenged. The scientific distinction between evidence of appearance bias and a legally actionable violation is essential: a robust psychological finding does not independently decide a particular legal case. Employment questions should be assessed against current official law and appropriate legal advice.
Evidence Appraisal and Open Research Questions
Established findings include systematic evidence that attractiveness cues can influence interpersonal impressions and experimental job-related judgments. There is also robust wider evidence connecting discrimination with mental-health outcomes, although it spans multiple forms of discrimination. Appearance-specific organizational reviews document varied mechanisms and practical consequences. Eagly et al. (1991); Hosoda et al. (2003); Emmer et al. (2024).
Emerging findings concern the measurement of anticipated appearance discrimination and the use of digitally manipulated videos to isolate visual cues in personnel judgments. These studies create useful tools and hypotheses, but require independent replication and tests of actual institutional outcomes. Ai et al. (2025); Kühn and Wolbring (2024).
Evidence remains limited concerning the long-term effectiveness of many anti-lookism interventions, cross-cultural measurement invariance beyond the populations examined, the distinct causal contribution of specific recommendation algorithms, and the degree to which organizational training alone alters real selection decisions. Future empirical questions include whether structured evaluations reduce bias across visible-difference categories, how appearance prejudice changes with organizational incentives, and how longitudinal exposure influences belonging and mental health. These are current research questions rather than promises of new content.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is lookism the same as attractiveness bias?
Lookism is a broad term for prejudicial or discriminatory treatment tied to appearance. Attractiveness bias identifies one mechanism within that field: an observer's more favorable assessment of someone considered attractive. Weight stigma, racialized grooming standards, and exclusion due to visible difference can be appearance-related without being adequately explained by a simple attractive-versus-unattractive rating.
Can attractive people also experience appearance-based harm?
Yes. Favorable stereotypes may be accompanied by unwanted sexual attention, assumptions about competence, narrow presentation expectations, or context-specific penalties. The 2024 hiring video experiment found that any advantage associated with attractiveness depended in part on gender and job type. Patterns must be assessed rather than assumed for a given individual. Kühn and Wolbring (2024).
Is lookism a recognized mental disorder?
Lookism describes a form of prejudice and unequal treatment, not a psychiatric diagnosis. Anticipatory fear or resulting distress can be clinically important when it causes substantial impairment. A clinician evaluates particular symptoms and conditions separately from the existence of unfair treatment.
Does appearance discrimination cause depression?
Discrimination can contribute to psychological distress, and broader experimental evidence supports immediate adverse effects on mental-health indicators. An individual's depressive disorder requires a separate clinical assessment, and causation for any specific person cannot be inferred from one exposure or correlation. Emmer et al. (2024).
Are appearance standards at work always discriminatory?
Standards require examination of the actual job, relevant law, consistency, impact, and accommodation obligations. A safety-related requirement and an arbitrary attractiveness preference can have different justifications and consequences. Organizational audits should make these criteria explicit.
What helps someone who has experienced lookism?
Useful responses may include documenting events, obtaining support, challenging harmful institutional practices, and seeking clinical care when distress or impairment warrants it. Programs should aim to improve safety and opportunity while addressing individual psychological needs. Appearance change is not a prerequisite for deserving equitable treatment.
Related Articles
Cluster Body Image and Appearance Psychology — Scientific foundations, multidimensional body image, stigma, clinical concepts, and interventions.
Social Media and Body Image: Appearance Comparison, Ideals, and Mental Health — Online appearance norms and comparison mechanisms.
Social Comparison on Social Media: Mental Health, Body Image, and Self-Evaluation — How online comparisons shape evaluative experiences.
Hair Color, Identity, and Self-Presentation: How Appearance Becomes a Social Signal — A distinct appearance-related social signaling topic.
Gray Hair Psychology: Age Perception, Attractiveness, Ageism, and Identity — An appearance-linked intersection with age stereotypes.
Weight Stigma and Mental Health: Discrimination, Stress, and Outcomes — examines interpersonal and structural weight stigma and mental health.
Appearance Teasing and Bullying: Body Image and Mental Health — reviews appearance-related teasing, bullying and body image distress.
Visible Differences and Psychological Adjustment: Appearance and Social Experiences — examines psychosocial adjustment to visible differences.
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