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So, have you heard about the dental assistant in Iowa who was fired for being too attractive? Yeah, apparently after ten years, her boss (and his wife) decided that the assistant was too great a temptation, and that he might act upon his temptations if she remained. So, she sued him for gender discrimination. And lost.
The story is making the rounds of the Internet, and it seems a lot of people are siding with the assistant. Now, I’ll be the first one to tell you that getting fired sucks bit crime. And for the termination to be for something so seemingly trivial seems even worse; I get that.
But, the reality is, last time I checked, attractive people were not a protected class. As such, terminating an employee for this reason might seem shallow and heartless, but it is not illegal. And, we’ve got members of truly protected classes that are suffering abuse and discrimination of all sorts that should never have happened, much less be happening in 2013. Yet somehow we don’t seem nearly as offended by that as by the fact that a “hot” woman was fired for her looks.
Makes me think maybe we’ve got a long ways to go.
