A few years ago, I worked at a resort in Pensacola. Really nice place on Pensacola Beach (if you’ve never been to Pensacola Beach, you should go. It’s really quite beautiful if you like beaches). The resort had five ginormous towers with hundreds of rooms. They had an activity center with two restaurants, two bars, two tennis courts, three swimming pools (two outdoor and one indoor), a spa, a gym, boat rentals, and all manner of planned activities for families and children. The place was also not what I’d call cheap. It wasn’t pricey like you’d see in larger cities, but for Pensacola, it was pricey. To go along with the image the owner wanted to maintain at the resort, no employee could have visible tattoos, exotic or unnatural hair colors, or visible piercings (aside from women being allowed to have one earring in one ear). This always bugged me bc I had a feeling I knew what the owner was saying without him saying it. He was saying there was something wrong with tattoos, piercings, and alternate hair colors. I think he felt that these expressions of individuality clashed with the environment and experience he wanted his guests to partake of. IOW, I believe on some level, that he was of the mindset that having tats, piercings, or alternate hair colors wasn’t “classy”. There’s an association in the minds of many that people with tattoos, piercings, and “unnatural” hair colors are lower class, unsavory individuals. And tattoos are often viewed as a sign of immorality or criminality by many people. To me, the owner wanted to keep such elements out of the resort so that his guests wouldn’t run screaming and never return bc they saw a tattoo of a heart on a scantily clad lifeguard or an eye-piercing on the tennis instructor (thinking about this makes me realize that he was probably trying to maintain a ‘safe space’ for his guests; ironic, as I’m pretty sure he was a conservative). I remember being at the resort shortly after I got hired and hearing the above guidelines on appearance, and thinking how all of that was so damned judgemental and superficial. As if having a tattoo has any bearing on your character. The ability to do one’s job is not hindered in any way by having a piercing in your tongue or ear. And hair color? Lawdy. It is so damn hard to pour drinks with red hair (though what would I know, since I shave my head). Now, obviously, he’s the owner of the place and can do whatever he pleases. He is free to run the resort in the manner he likes, to please the guests in the way that he feels is best. I’m not criticizing that. No, I’m criticizing what I think is the mindset behind “no visible tattoos”, “no piercings”, and “no alternate hair colors”. It’s the same type of mindset that is apparent in this story of a nurse being shamed by a cashier all because she dyed her hair in an array of colors: