As I’ve said before, women have it way harder than men when it comes to appropriate office dressing, especially in the summer. In addition to figuring out hemline length and strap thickness, there’s one more element to summertime business casual: cleavage.
If you’re on the flatter side, like me, it’s a lot easier to get away with wearing lower cut tops at work, since it’s incredibly unlikely you’ll have anything to expose. But if you’ve been blessed with a fuller figure, you have to be extra careful about what you wear. It’s sad but true – even though you didn’t ask for your boobs or ask everyone to base their opinions of you on said boobs, they will. People will talk to your breasts instead of your face and, at work, when you’re doing everything you can to be taken seriously, a button coming loose at an inopportune moment could be the kiss of death. Depending what industry you’re in, cleavage can go either way – I’ve known women who work at restaurants and get better tips if they show more skin, as well as women in fashion who hide their breasts when the gamine look is back in style.
Based on my own entirely unscientific survey, cleavage was fine if you had a male boss and totally verboten if you had a female one. Do any of you have such stories to report about your own boobs or someone else’s in the office?
I feel like women have it much tougher when it comes to proper business attire. It’s pretty hard for men to go wrong with a suit (although my former boss and his “fun” ties with dumb prints on them sure did his hardest to disprove that statement), but women have to navigate everything from skirt length to heel height. If you’d asked me what I thought about wearing makeup at work, I would have guessed that women wearing obvious makeup at work was a faux pas, but a recent British study seems to prove me wrong:
64 per cent of directors said that women who wore make-up look more professional and 18 per cent of directors said that women who do not wear make-up “look like they can’t be bothered to make an effort.”
This Times of London article, which wants to present itself as helpful but is actually totally condescending, advises women on their makeup options. The author suggests going to a department store and getting a makeover from the consultants (and probably buying a lot of expensive products as well, right?), plucking eyebrows, using self-tanner and/or a bronzer, and even goes so far as to suggest that men should try sporting makeup as well.
Maybe some people think wearing makeup is the answer. I think “stop judging people by their looks as long as they’re presentable and dressed professionally” is a more efficient plan, but perhaps I’m in the minority on that one. After all – I work from home. It’s a miracle when I put on clothes instead of pajamas.
What about you? Do you feel pressure to wear makeup or to put on a certain kind of makeup for work?
When it’s cold, it’s easy to look more formal at work. You’re already all covered up and wearing thick, non-transparent fabrics. But with summer coming (or if you live in someplace other than the Northeast, summer might be there already), you start trying to walk that line between cute summer attire and proper work dress. You can always throw a cardigan over your sundress or stick flip-flops in your bag while you sport loafers at the office, but … what about shorts? One article examines the trend-that’s-now-too-longstanding-to-be-a-trend:
In May 2006, when shorts first started making their way into city offices in the US, The New York Times’ Ruth la Ferla put it down to an easing of workplace dress standards.
“Dress codes these days are as elastic as a bungee cord, expanding to accommodate all manner of once unthinkable workplace infractions,” she wrote. “This year that increasingly flexible standard has stretched to encompass shorts, of all things.”
La Ferla too had waved them off as a passing “infraction”. A faux pas. One that we’d all laugh about later. She too was wrong.
As for your office, my general attitude about dress codes is “wait and see.” If someone higher up than you can get away with wearing shorts, then you’re good to go. Otherwise, you can try wearing a pair but keep a pair of pants in your bag just in case the office manager gives you a dirty look and you feel like you might be veering too far on the side of informal. Just, whatever you do, don’t wear a skort. No one can pull that off.
Liz Funk is the author of Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls. Her book deals with the pressures many women and girls face to be ‘perfect’ at everything, often to their own personal detriment. She very kindly agreed to answer some questions from me about how this concept applies to the workplace.
STA: Do you think that, despite many laws and other concentrated efforts for gender equality, women are treated differently in the workplace?
LF: Absolutely. At each and every level, there are different standards and expectations for women. The most frequently echoed frustration that I heard from young women working on the job search and starting in their career track is not knowing what to do with their femininity, and trying to strike a balance between being cute and pretty and being competent. There is also a tendency to view women supervisors as mother figures, and we hold women in the office to a certain standard of niceness, and there’s a real trickle-down effect that compels many women at work to sugar-coat things.
STA: What particular goals, pressures, and ideas do women bring into the office?
LF: I personally feel that femininity is a great tool. As a whole, women are very intuitive and they’re natural negotiators. Powerful women aren’t always bulls the way powerful men frequently are, and I think women are better at meeting people where they’re at and finding common ground. Also, something that I’ve overwhelmingly noticed is that girls are much better at impressing others in workplace and having career common-sense, and I think they’re much less overentitled than guys (which is something that is scarcely brought-up in this “Gen Y overentitlement” media brouhaha).
STA: Where do you think this notion of “women must be perfect” come from?
Continue reading ‘the sta interview: liz funk’
April 28th is Equal Pay Day. I’m not sure exactly whether the day is supposed to be about “celebrating” the fact that men and women are allegedly being paid equally or about bemoaning the fact that men still make more than women for doing the same jobs. I’m going with the latter, obviously. Marie Claire has some sobering stats that we should keep in mind today:
- For every dollar a man makes, a woman makes 78 cents. That number has climbed 1 cent since 2006.
- Fresh-out-of-college women make $15,498 less per year than the boys; over a 35-year career, they’ll make $210,000 less.
- A 25-year-old female PR specialist makes the same as her male colleagues; 20 years later, she’ll make about $35,000 less.
- She-EOs make $303,000 less than their male counterparts.
- Male primary-care physicians make 22 percent more than lady docs.
- Male IT workers make 11.9 percent more than geekettes.
- According to the American Association of University Women, at the current rate, we’ll reach pay equity in 2040.
Woo, what a fun holiday! Time for some Jager bombs in the break room!
In all the hubbub around Admin Professionals Day, I totally forgot that yesterday was Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Originally planned as a day to introduce girls to the workforce and educate them about career options, some now argue that feminism in the workplace has advanced enough that girls don’t have to be taken into offices to see positive female role models – they’re on TV, at home, and everywhere else.
Brazen Careerist founder Penelope Trunk has a post on her personal blog about how she thinks the day should be be abolished, dismissed as no longer necessary.
This holiday now strikes me as one similar to Secretaries Day, which is a relic from the days when there were no computers and secretaries had thankless jobs and the men who were having sex with them on the side always forgot to thank her in the spotlight for the typing, so there is an official reminder day to buy her a card. That made sense. Twenty years ago.
She makes the valid argument that for many people, there’s no line between work and home anyway, and it seems uneccessary at best and annoying at worst to bring kids into a professional workplace.
Continue reading ’should we take our kids to work?’
The Evil Empire, the company where Ashley and I used to work, had a certain unusual hiring practice. While it wasn’t a rule, they tended to interview a group of people for an open entry-level position and then hire whoever was the thinnest. The person was usually qualified and had all the right credentials, but consciously or subconsciously the folks in charge of hiring seemed to prefer hiring skinny chicks. The New York Times’ Freakonomics blog (based on the popular book of the same name) delve into the topic of “beauty quorums,” where unspoken advantages go to people who are considered more attractive. But how did they put their theory into practice? By asking some people to rate their own looks and then talk about their careers.
As awful as this sounds, I don’t think the people should have been allowed to rate their own attractiveness. While it was pretty heartwarming to see some positive body image on display, a “beauty quorum” is decided by the looker and not the person being looked upon. As a result, the results of this particular survey seem a little off-kilter, even though the topic they’re discussing is incredibly relevant.
This month’s Glamour offers “16 Seduction Tips.” One of those tips:
In case you were wondering, I don’t advocate this.
Thanks to Jezebel for reading Glamour so I didn’t have to.
Here’s a query for all the fab STA readers out there, maybe we can start a discussion on this matter. It’s a topic to which I have no real conclusion… Over the years, I’ve come to notice a certain practice in offices: male boss with female assistant, and female boss with male assistant. To clarify, I have only my own experience as an intern and assistant in a number of rather small offices, ranging probably from between 1-10 coworkers, so this may not carry to the rest of the world’s many 100, 1,000, or 10,000-plus-employee offices. Is it the industry I’m in? My instinct is no. And as there are currently only two sexes of the human race, it’s really a flip of the coin as to the pairing of boss / assistant. Do the math, kids – there are only four combinations:
Male boss / female assistant; Male boss / male assistant; Female boss / female assistant; Female boss / male assistant.So, because of the very limited possibilities, my amateur theory on this may be entirely bull. But I’m gonna run with it just a bit.There are so many dangerous, Indiana-Jones-esque social traps and etiquette pitfalls in the corporate world. You can be friends with you boss / co-workers, but not too close friends or drama and possible blackmail can ensure when you least expect / need it. (Ed. note: See “frenemy” for more details.) You can also hate your bosses / co-workers, but it’s always nice if you can simply put up with them for the 8-12 (hopefully not more) hours it takes you to get through the day and not go home and flog yourself. Everything in moderation, right?So, when it comes to that very special boss/assistant relationship, what’s the optimal pairing? As a boss, do you want to be best friends, equals, aloof, or tyrannical with your assistant? As an assistant, do you want to respect, tolerate or fear your boss? There’s a lot of grey area here that I’m overshadowing, but you get the drift.I mention these fragile social issues in order to follow my odd thesis, no doubt expanded upon ever-more-brilliantly by someone other than myself, but bear with me. How exactly do the sexes work together? No two scenarios are alike, that’s one thing we can count on, with an infinite number of variables. But let’s lay it down straight – is it easier, in a hierarchical relationship like that of a boss and assistant, to work with someone of the opposite sex or someone of the same sex? Would love some thoughts on the topic.
I’ve always thought that maybe if those kids over at Seattle Grace stopped fucking each other long enough, they’d actually get some work done. But for those of you who want your workplace to more closely resemble Grey’s Anatomy, you’re in luck. One in five Italian workers admitted to having an affair with a coworker, and reported that doing so made them happier in general and more eager to go to work. (Let’s face it: who wouldn’t be happier to show up at the office if there was a chance of getting some afternoon delight in a broom closet?) 1/3 of respondents also admitted to sleeping with a superior so they could get ahead in their careers.
