Should Nightclubs have the Right to Say "no" based on appearance?
 

There seem to be two different ideals colliding in this:
1) People that are less traditionally attractive already face a great deal of challenges in life, and wanting to be able to go out with friends and dance or try to meet someone shouldn't be complicated by what seems to be unfair business practices.
2) A business like a night club should have the legal right to refuse service to anyone, just like most other establishments.

What are your thoughts?

If I owned a club, I absolutely wouldn't even think of implementing a policy like this, business consequences be damned. Sure, having better looking people will make the club more popular, but at the expense of treating innocent people like freaks? It's unthinkable. That being said, if the club belongs to someone else, there's not a lot I can do other than not go back.

Edit: for clarification, I don't mean clothing, but physical features.

Hey, it's their club. I'm for #2, if simply because it wouldn't effect me.


Wink.

If this were a poll I'd choose number one. For some people getting admitted into a club that is known for being difficult to get into is some sort of status symbol, but I've never liked clubs where the atmosphere was a coolness contest.

Sure. Any privately owned establishment should be able to bar anyone access for any random (if stupid) reason they want. Turning away business only truly hurts one party in the situation.

I haven't ever been to a club in which someone was denied entrance because they weren't attractive enough but I've been to plenty of clubs in which people are denied entrance because they aren't dressed as per the dress code.

Seriously, you guys have seen a person rejected because they're too ugly?

I'm all for exclusivity at clubs based upon clothing simply because people who dress in a similar fashion will typically have more things in common, are much more likely to enjoy each others company which leads to dancing and which leads to the consumption of alcohol.

That's good business - nothing wrong with that.

Turns out my money is just as attractive as the next guy's.

That is the purpose of nightclubs, no?

Those $12 shots make everybody hot in 45 minutes.

I find it rather repugnant to have to pass a beauty test to get entrance into a club. That being said, I don't really go to clubs. Moreover, I suppose its up to the individual business. There are plenty of businesses whose practices I find repugnant; I just don't patronize them.

Clubs absolutely should pursue any type of appearance requirements they want. I firmly believe shallow people should be rounded up for slaughter.

Absolutely.
When I pay for, and put forth the effort to go out to a a nice restaurant, to the symphony...what have you, nothing irritates me more than the clown that shows up in jeans and a t-shirt. You can be dog ugly and still dress appropriately. If you can't, then go to Applebee's and the cine-plex. Nothing wrong with that. I don't really go to night clubs, but I see no reason that they should be any different. If you want to go to a nice club, then dress like you do. If you don't, there's always Joe's Bar & Grill. Nothing wrong with that either.

I've been rejected in the club because I was too ugly...but I've never been denied entry to a club for being too ugly. ;)

This I agree with. Except the cine-plex. I was very turned off the first time I took a date to a movie and saw that most people were dressed like absolute slobs.

Dress codes are fine. And I don't think any clubs in DC turn away ugly people, but I do know it's common in LA and a few places in NYC.

There are door tenders in Georgetown, but mostly to reject drunken people. As has been said many a time, Georgetown is like Hollywood for ugly people.

It's their business and they get to pick their customers. I wouldn't be upset if MORE clubs started doing this. If I were ever single again, it'd be nice to know that women in my league weren't allowed in clubs either, and we could run into each other in wholesome places like libraries and supermarkets again.

No, I definitely agree on the dress code thing. I'm of the school of thought that would rather be over-dressed than under-dressed, personally. I have no problem with a club excluding people for not meeting a certain standard of dress.

On a slight side bar, I literally saw people in applique vests and black jeans at a gubernatorial inaugural ball...that really annoyed me, considering I was in a strapless ballgown and had spent a lot of time/money on my appearance that night.

That gave me a good giggle.

A business owner's right to run a classy establishment trumps your right to get into his club.

Also, your feelings are not legally protected. I seriously doubt they'd reject a properly dressed 'ugly' person who would fit in with the crowd they are trying to cultivate.

I don't see it as being as simple as a legal issue. The market often rewards ethical behavior, a business observing the social contract, and that could come into play in this hypothetical situation. In other words, the animosity of people turned away shouldn't be underestimated.

You turn a skinny kid away one day and the next day you realize it was Kevin Rose and tends of thousands of people on Digg are talking about how your club is awful. Two days later there's a Facebook group "Boycott *Night Club*" with a million members and Anonymous has a few dozen people in Guy Fawks masks protesting in front of the club. It it likely? No, but it's hard to deny that turning away consumers can cause problems.

By appearance, do you mean attire, or just how you look?

If you mean attire, then yes they should. It is a business, and the owners should be allowed to do whatever they want to protect their investment and run a successful business. If they feel a certain attire might cause a loss of business, then the owners should be allowed to refuse entry. If they had open weeping sores it would be a health hazard so the owners would be ok in refusing entry.

If you mean looks, not thin enough, pimply, scarred, tattooed, but dressed appropriately, then no, that is wrong. If someone was attired correctly but had a hunchback and hairy moles and was just ugly, then it would be discrimination, and the owners would be wrong if the person met the dress code.

those who say that nightclubs can turn "ugly" people away should consider:

Saying that a nightclub should be allowed to turn someone away because their physical appearance, which they were born with and have no control over, is not pleasing to the night club, should remember that black skin is a physical appearance attribute that you're born with and have no control over. Should nightclubs be able to turn black people away?

Your physical condition.

You know who wouldn't let ugly people into HIS nightclub?









Godwin!

well, i'm one of those people who refuses to dress up elaborately to go to the symphony because i figure i'm there for the music and not for the social validation. but in other situations, i enjoy getting a bit decked out.

clubs? typically, i go to clubs for a specific show/performance and not to hang out or for trawling so i don't run into this often.
i suppose that's part of the game though, and the clubs i go to are already a self-selecting space, generally because of the music that i am going to see--you just don't see a lot of folk dressed to the nines at performances featuring people abusing metal objects and delay pedals, or for more experrymental music--so maybe everyone dresses according to a de facto "underground" dress code. which means that the spaces that put this sound on counts on it to attract a demographic that they like to have around, whose money they enjoy taking etc.

if you're trying to reach a particular demographic with a club, you have to use a variety of elements to stream that demographic into your space. if you're after a market that you assume puts a priority on getting dressed up to get messed up, then you kinda have to impose a filter at the door. why anyone would do that is a mystery to me, but that only demonstrates that i'm probably not in that target demographic.

for some business models, control over the demographic is key to viability.

of course, there's a thin line between control exercised over dresscode and control exercised on uglier grounds.
i figure that a clubowner has the prerogative to do as they like so far as dresscode is concerned, and if it turns out that they fuck with people over other things, then the rest of us have the prerogative to slag the club on the net, in newspaper reviews, by telling friends, etc..

I consider it less about social validation and more about feeling fancy.
I didn't really mean a dress code, I mean more of a 'face code'. If someone seems physically unattractive to a bouncer, you don't get in. I see this even here in San Jose. I don't go to clubs often (I can't stand pop music), but when I do there's invariably the person at the door that's judging people before letting them in. It's disguised, of course, but not well. People that are overweight or that aren't classically attractive are less likely to get in to certain clubs.

I've never run into face control in the States, though I don't really go clubbing here much. We ran into it all the time when I lived in Moscow for a summer, though, as an American, dollars got us a lot farther than any of our looks did.

I don't have any specific problem with them doing it, although I think the success of such a policy is going to have meaningful business ramifications. If your goal is to create an elite club atmosphere full of beautiful people, I'm ok with that. There's no truly objective standard on beauty, so I'm not sure looks are ever going to become a protected class like race or religion, so I'm not sure how well your argument stands up shakran.

hmm...interesting question. I am not one of the beautiful people, and I love to dance... so if I went to a club and got turned away, well... it would suck. Then again, that's probably not the kind of club I'd want to be in anyway; I'd rather focus on the music than the people.

Of course, I go clubbing in Dayton and Cincinnati, and they're usually either goth clubs or gay clubs. I enjoy those more than the poppy straight clubs where everyone just seems to want to dryhump on the dance floor.

Oh, right...answer the question, Cinn! :lol: I guess, speaking objectively...sure, let them admit whoever they want. I'd prefer another club, though, and would spend my money accordingly.

I don't have a problem with this. I don't think I really want to go to a club that has that sort of policy so I wouldn't really matter if I was too unattractive to make it past the rope.

The only reason a club does this sort of weeding out at the door is to ensure that people talk about how exclusive the club is. If a club is exclusive, so the theory goes, more people will want to get in. See: Studio 54.

I'm gonna put in my vote for option number 2. Businesses have the right to reject "ugly" people if they want and people who are offended by that have the right not to go there. Ultimately, the free market tends to work itself out.

If I owned a club, I would definitely discriminate based on attire though.

Well, I live in LA, where the clubs are extremely discriminatory, based not only on physical appearance but also on who you know. I am by no means one of the beautiful people, so the only times I've gotten into clubs, it's been because of who I knew, back when I was working in The Industry.

That said, I cannot help but admit that a club is a business, and should have the right to refuse service to whomever they please. So I guess that's what I support.

Of course, it probably helps that I really hate clubs, clubbing, and the kinds of people I have met in clubs, and was delighted when I left The Industry to never have to go to a club again. So I suppose my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.

Are clubs in the United States allowed, for example, to deny a patron entry to the establishment based on their ethnicity? Because I see that as being the next logical step here.

that's a good point shakran.

If there was a "face code" in clubs, I see it as a form of discrimination. It is something the person cannot choose, and also it is a very sensitive point for most people. Just seems wrong, however you look at it. Somehow, it also sounds like there may be a good legal reason why that would not be allowed. But I'm not a lawyer so I couldn't say.

Oh, well in that case, fuck no they shouldnt be allowed to turn someone away.

Then again, I am not a good looking man, I would most likely be turned away, and that for me would be a good thing. I wouldn´t want to hang out with teh shallow fake ass people who would ignore me because I dont look like Brad Pitt.

Reminds me of the song perfect people by Pennywise
-----Added 14/11/2008 at 08 : 42 : 35-----
There are bars in Japan that wont let you in if you are not Japanese. They turned me away, didn´t want me in there, and I was good with it. I didn´t want to go in if they didnt want me there.
-----Added 14/11/2008 at 08 : 45 : 15-----
I bet if you were wearing gownless evening straps they would have let you in.

Here, here. I would let you in!

As to the OP, I agree with #2. I've been let it to those places, based on appearance. I had fun. I wouldn't do that ever again. I no longer have any interest.

Sure. Sounds good to me. Let them discriminate all they want. I still won't show up.

I'm sure typical Digg readers and the typical night club patrons are groups with huge overlap :p
I'm not in a big population center, but the fact that one of my friends was denied entry to a bar because he was dressed like a bum hasn't stopped me from making it one of my usual hangouts.

The difference here is that clubs (and all businesses, for that matter), are legally prohibited from turning people away because of race. There aren't any laws prohibiting discrimination against ugly people. Is it somehow morally wrong to turn people away based on physical appearance? Perhaps. But as a girl who prefers darts and cheap beer to the club type atmosphere, I sometimes wish the bars I liked were more exclusive about who they let in. As a girl, it's nice to be able to dance, or shoot pool, or whatever it is you like to do, without there being gobs of ugly, aggressive guys all up on you. I'm not saying that all places should be really exclusive based on looks, but it's nice to have that option.

What about good-looking and aggressive?

I think that clubs should be able to deny entry based on dress, and on attitude (i.e. drunkenness, pushyness, beligerence) but not based on being too ugly.

Certainly door policies in the UK are like this.

I remember once stopping to eat lunch at this biker/outlaw bar in a small town in Southern Ohio. They had a big sign out in front that said "NO FAT CHICKS." But one look at the clientele told me that they didn't really mean it.:shakehead:

Lindy
(on the road again in Iowa)

Great line, Bill O'Rights!!

any business that wants to refuse service to someone for something totally beyond their control is not a business i'd patronize anyway.

You'd be surprised how often I run into Rose (or rather used to).