Within recent years it has been found emotions play a large part in today’s work place, with the same now being said in regards to aesthetic labour. Postrell (2003) even suggests that we are on verge of entering an ‘aesthetic economy’, bring forth an era of appearance and feel. With the fundamental feature of this economy predominately being employees appearance developing the notion that ‘style is strategy’, Postrell also suggests that the look of employees can also determine the ambience of a room as much as the furnishings or decor. Aesthetic labour itself is a modern term in regards to recruiting staff whom look the part (Witz et al, 2003). The concept of aesthetic labour was developed based on employer’s impression that parts of the service industries were portrayed as the ‘style labour market’ this includes the following service areas; bars, hotels, events and retailers, who require aesthetic skills in addition to social and technical skills from employees (Nickson et al, 2004, p.3).

Today’s research shows that within the UK, service jobs now accommodate around three-quarters of all jobs, with them predominantly coming from the retail and hospitality sectors. With a 17 percent growth between 1979 and 2003 within these sectors alone it can be seen from current examination of employer’s trends that the selections of employees with self presentation skills have a higher preference than experience or technical skills. For example a current survey of one hundred human resource experts within the United States of America accountable for employing hospitality industry employees publicized that their top two criteria’s were ‘pride in appearance’ and a ‘good attitude’ (Martin and Grove, 2002), the hospitality training foundation (2001) also confirmed that these top criteria’s are also shared by the industries within the UK. Once again both within the UK and USA it has been found that once employees have been employed their appearance continues to influence and help them, with suggestion that service, profession and pay are all subjective to employee’s appearance. Within the UK this is most prominent in the service sector however it can be seen in most areas (Harper, 2000). Nick et al (2004, p.3) argues that aesthetics within interactive service work is also becoming a major input however this trend has not yet been confirmed by policy markers. Other authors also suggest that the aesthetics within interactive service work is extremely significant with trends coming from interrelationships as well as from human and non human elements that are found with the workplace itself. In which aestheticization process can present them through fundamental ‘actor network theory’, these are transitions of redevelopment identifying how systems come together to act as a whole (Deepdyve Beta 2010).

In particular in many customer facing jobs a large amount of importance is placed on a person’s characteristics to a degree in which employers specifically look for people who are ‘passionate, stylish, confident, tasty, clever, successful and well travelled’ (Warhurst and Nickson, 2001, p.14). It is essentially that all employees portray the ‘right image’ for the ‘company, irrespective of the skills they possess. Grugulis et al (2004) argues that many managers may try to control how their employees feel and look, as well as how they behave, so that they can expose the correct emotions, aesthetics and productivity needed within a specific working environment. Moulding employee’s appearance is a very well known process used by employers to maintain a business like image; this includes the use of uniforms and dress codes. In a recent survey it was found eighty percent of organisations surveyed enforced a uniform policy or dress code, principally to keep up