Saturday, July 6, 2013

"Wax on, wax off" or You're Fired

This is a case making the rounds of the employment law blogosphere for its salaciousness and silliness. In western Pennsylvania, a woman is suing her employer, a waxing salon, after she was fired for refusing to participate in a Brazilian waxing session with co-workers, which is part of the training program at the chain of salons.  Specifically, the woman claimed that she was ordered to Brazilian wax her female co-workers, and to allow herself to be waxed, to train in the procedure.

This sounds reasonable--given what little I know about having pubic hair pulled out by the roots, if I were a customer, it's a process I would prefer to have done by someone who had at least practiced.  But the plaintiff claims gender discrimination because men weren't required to do this.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there aren't a lot of guys lining up in Pittsburgh salons to get burning wax applied to their nether regions, followed by having their hairs ripped out--this is one of those things where women are either a lot tougher, or dumber, or both.  Given that this is an almost exclusively female practice (although if the salon employed male waxers, I could see there being a similar requirement), I'm pretty sure this case fails as gender discrimination.  The retaliation claim falls as well, because the initial complaint of gender discrimination doesn't seem well-founded.

Where's Pat Morita when you need him?

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