Beauty and the business: staff beauty contests in a time of 'Equal Opportunities'.

Late twentieth-century feminism challenged a core pillar of the profit maximization efforts of corporate capitalism: reinforcement of systemic unearned inequalities as a form of compensation to employees. This article explores how employers harnessed heterosexual impulses and culturally available activities to build staff loyalty. In the 1960s-1980s, English high-street companies ran formal beauty contests open only to their female employees. These staff beauty contests serve as a useful barometer of wider cultural change. They had wide appeal in the 1960s. However, this article demonstrates that over the following decades, staff beauty contests alienated a growing percentage of increasingly diverse corporate workforces. In the 1980s, staff beauty contests were under increasing pressure from within as feminist ideas permeated conservative business environments sufficiently for many women and men to risk reprisal for challenging this once popular business practice. This pressure, combined with external campaigning against sexual harassment and an increasing need to attract and retain female employees, led companies to discontinue their beauty contests in the late 1980s.