S2E06: Joy in Challenging Beauty Standards

We help you ring in the New Year with this month's episode (released New Year's Day)! Will shares that (last year's) New Year's Eve festivities brought him joy; and Amber gives us an inside look at her Spotify Wrapped.  This episode's main discussion topic is Beauty Standards and the Halo Effect (allowing people whom you might find more attractive to get away with things that you might not let people you find less attractive to get away with - see the TV show "You" as a great example of "the character is a stalker, but he's hot, so it's kind of okay!").  For story time, Will recounts a negative story about what could have been a human resources violation at a workplace related to a married couple where the wife was up for a promotion and the boss wanted to make sure she did not wind up with a pay bump that would have resulted in her making more money than her husband, but the HR person stepping in to stop that nonsense; followed up by a more positive story that ties into the main Beauty Standards topic, and how "Star Trek: Discovery" had a lovely storyline about a "repulsive looking" alien character finding love in the final season of the show (with a more traditionally beautiful character). In response to this month's audience question, Amber and Will discuss name bias and the ways in which it can negatively impact folks, such as applying for jobs (and ways in which to potentially combat that bias).   The bias habit-breaking skill in this episode is to Adopt a Cumulative Perspective on Bias, which requires understanding that just because you might think if you slip up and express bias towards someone, you should acknowledge that your "one time slip up" is actually probably one of dozens of "slip ups" that person has been the recipient of that day - because bias, even minor slips - aren't actually rare and isolated incidents for those people experiencing them. The episode wraps up with Amber's joyful recommendation of "Never Say Never with Jeff Jenkins", a travel show hosted by a larger bodied Black man, who doesn't let the lack of accommodations for heavier folks stand in his way of having all the life experiences he wants to have (like skydiving).

We now have merch! Buy some to support the show at https://www.biashabit.com/store

Follow Diverse Joy on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Threads, and Bluesky.