Let’s say a man is working with a woman in a professional capacity. Let’s further say that, without necessarily wanting to pursue a romantic, sexual or any other sort of personal relationship with her, the man finds the woman physically attractive. It’s hard, after all, not to notice when someone else is attractive.
Seems to me that the man in question really ought to keep his opinion to himself, at minimum until and unless he has established a strong level of rapport and mutual professional esteem with the woman in question. And maybe not even then. This isn’t so hard, is it?
I wouldn’t think so. I do it with guys all the time. As a matter of fact I work across the aisle from a total sexpot.
I hope the dude doesn’t lurk here at the League or else I just fished up.
Even if you know the woman well, which might make it okay in some situations, it shouldn’t be part of a public comment. O screwed up.
Apparently they do know each other well, and he still absolutely should not have said anything in public. At least he didn’t say the other part, which everybody in the Bay Area knows: for Willie Brown to have dated a black woman, she had to be an 11 out of 10.
You’re right. Obama shouldn’t have done that.
I’m with North on this; too. We girls know we’re constantly being measured by how we look instead of who we are and what we do. And it’s even worse if the commentary is that we don’t rise to that level of eye candy. Women are often guilty of this to other women, too.
But think on it: beautiful women are used to sell beer, plane tickets, cars, and everything else under the sun. We make a big deal telling little girls how cute they are; boys how strong or some other manly value. Fashion and beauty products are huge industries, and there’s a constant message that you need to look better.
But there is a flip side, albiet a small one: women have an incredible amount of leeway in how they choose to present themselves, there’s a lot of room for self-expression. Men, on the other hand, have options that are nearly non-existant.
I’d like to see a lot more focus on how men look, how they dress, the beauty products they need to look their best (basic skin care, dudes), and of course, a bounty of fashion choices in a rainbow of colors.
For North and for me. Because women feel attraction too, and it’s typically left out of the discussion. I’m with North on this. There are hotties out there, and I totally hope they don’t know I think so.
As a guy, I like the idea that I don’t have to worry as much about my looks and about how I present myself. But I realize it’s unfair that I have this privilege and women don’t.
Pierre Cornell is the best looking commenter at the League.
There I said it.
“Corneille”, of course. (Proof read before posting.)
I’m just surprised you knew that looker’s last name. I always called him Pierre Tightbutt.
Kazzy,
You’re [redacted] because of [redacted] in [redacted], but it doesn’t really matter. I [redacted] with it all the way!
Great point, Zic. For men, you can wear a suit… or you can wear a suit. Maybe if you are daring and work in a “liberal” enough environment you can have some fun with your suits… work in seersucker for the summer, jazz it up with some fun bow ties, or work in some loud colors and patterns. But for most men, it’s the gray suit with the white shirt or the blue suit with the white shirt.
Of course, women’s freedom comes with a price. It is easier for them to err or to be called out for erring because they’ve offended someone’s personal preferences. A female colleague of mine has had to deal with this. Our employee handbook spells out very specific criteria for men… button up shirts, sports coats or blazers, dress shoes, and ties. For women? It says something about wearing something “similarly appropriate” to the detailed description for men. And as a younger woman with some curves, even a fairly modest dress or outfit draws uncomfortable attention that has actually led to unofficial reprimands. It’s a damn shame, is what it is.
Ironically, I have a personal theory that much of women’s beauty routine is just one big feedback loop. They slather on the makeup to cover up blemishes, most of which are there in the first place because their face is slathered in makeup all day. Then they apply scrubs and cleansers of one kind or another to clean off the makeup, drying out their skin, which then necessitates moisturizing, leading to the slathering and blemish effect. Rinse (with oil-free cleanser, of course) and repeat. And, as we’ve discussed, many women look better with little to no makeup at all. But, dems ain’t the rules honey.
My daughter has caused me to start thinking a lot about this. Maybe a post at some point. I can put Lain in blue. If she is followed by a son, I won’t put him in pink. This, to me, represents the freedom of girlhood and the cultural burden of being a girl. In a way.
This does deserve a post.
Though I suspect if I asked my wife or sister if they’d trade their superior pink-wearing freedoms in exchange for having men be the ones to deal with the stuff women have to deal with in their fields…
The thing is, Tod, that the “freedom to wear pink” is itself based on gender norms that disfavor women. If women can emulate men but men can’t emulate women, men may lack a rather narrow freedom, but only because female behavior is not to be emulated. It says something both about how we view men (rigidly, but more respectfully) and women (less rigidly, but… ).
Perhaps it is that men can lose a lofty place in society that women can’t even attain in the first place. Wearing pink can lower the top rung on your ladder; unfortunately, girls are born wearing it (literally and figuratively).
Yeah, I was totally right; you really do need to make this a post, Will.
I had a colleague whose son was a bit of a “princess boy”. She was concerned, not because of his expressed interests, but because she judged the world to be far more accepting of “Tom boys” than of whatever-the-male-equivalent is.
That’s sort of where I’m coming from on the issue. I have no problem if I have a son that plays with dolls and wears pink. I actually have no problem if our adult colleagues know it. I would be concerned primarily about his classmates and peers. That concern is largely absent from a girl (replaced, I will add, by many other concerns).
The weird think is that as late as the 1920s pink was the color for boys. It was supposed to be a junior version of the scarlet of the manly British army.
I think you and Zic are living a bit in the past. Maybe this is very NYC-SF of me but there are plenty of options for men now in terms of:
1. Shaving and Grooming products including shaving creams and cleansers that cost 20-30 dollars or more of a bottle.
2. Clothing including avant-garde and playful stuff. I own a pair of green suede shoes with a yellow sole. I also own a pair of brown shoes with a blue sole. When when shopping for work/dress/business shirts, I see tons of options in terms of pattern and such. Also suits as well. Why do you think it is just a grey or blue suit with a white shirt? Admittedly I only wear the green suede shoes to work on casual Friday but I can get away with a lot more than bland and dull without raising and eyebrow. I think it has been years since I wore a plain white shirt to work.
3. Many work places are relaxing their workplace attire requirements (at least out West) and this frees men from wearing suits.
4. There is good money to be made in clothing for men beyond the basic level. As an example:
http://www.unionmadegoods.com/
I know plenty of men who dress more creatively than the limited stuff you and Zic describe. I also know plenty of men who feel like anything beyond jeans and t-shirt or a t-shirt and shorts is something close to a Monk’s hair shirt. But there are plenty of options out there for men who want them and there are plenty of men who use them.
#3 is correct. I have never had a job that required I wear a suit. Or even encouraged it. I have had employers prohibit it.
Hell in a handbasket, I tell you.
Having registered my protest at the deprofessionalization of professionals, I will confess it is nice to have a variety of options at my disposal. Back when I was working for a large software company on the west coast, I never approved of the fact that people were wearing flip-flops and the like. I tried to dress “up” as much as I could without making a spectacle of myself. It was nice, though, periodically to be able to wear t-shirt and a jeans.
Even there, I couldn’t stomach flip-flops or shorts.
Tech is a league of its own when it comes to workplace attire for a variety of reasons. It is a relatively new field of employment compared to other areas, most people in the field are relatively young, some companies are entirely staffed by 20 and 30 somethings*, etc. Plus many tech people I know seem to be perpetual t-shirt and jeans people.
However a lot of law firms are going business casual. Even the places that are still suit and a tie, it is common to go beyond a gray or blue suit with a white shirt. I have suits with pinstripes, in glen plaid checks, etc.
That is true, but less than half of my employers (two of seven applicable) have been geek shops. The others were companies related to software (except for the energy-sector one), but very much not run by tech people. More analogous to what I’d consider most white-collar employers to be.
That’s interesting about the law firm, though. I figure they’d be among the last to switch.
Will,
As I understand even IT/Tech guys at non-geek shops can get away with a lot of leeway because of their skills. No one wants the servers to go down, so no employer is going to be too hard on how the techs dress.
Law firms are the last to change but it is very much according to practice, the age of the founding partners, type of law, and location. East Coast firms tend to be more formal than West Coast firms. Some firms have requirements that you keep a suit in the office to be “Court ready” but can otherwise do business casual or less.
There are still some suit and tie, five days a week places though. The bosses tend to be older (read: over 60) at firms that require suit and tie every day of the week.
IT has not generally had a different dress code than the rest of the company where I’ve worked. I mean, more lax requirements than the “faces” of the company (receptionists, executives, sales if they’re going to be meeting somebody), but not especially lax. Could be that IT people are more likely to push the boundaries. Maybe they/we get away with more than I have realized?
I’ve yet to see a really good coder who was also a slob. But I’ve known some excellent problem-solvers who were, one in particular, who I could never trust around the client. His personality was as unpleasant as his personal hygiene. He’d stay home and we’d throw him MS Windows internals problems over the transom. He’d sit there and work the problem, literally every waking moment, until he had a solution.
But he was expressly forbidden to speak to the clients, especially not to women or to Japanese.
The dress-down phenomenon emerged as an allergic reaction to the old IBM suit and tie era. When I started out writing software, I had to wear a shirt and tie, shiny shoes too. I’ve been around the block long enough to see most of my old ties come back into vogue. Twice.
Now we’re in a no-tie phase and most men shuffle around in their Dockers slacks and two-button pullover shirts. It’s pathetic. Get some damned shirts and pants that fit, okay? Shine your shoes. Get a haircut. And clean your desk. This isn’t college and it sure as hell isn’t your basement. Being a professional only means you’re getting paid for doing your job. But a workplace is as surely a stage as any other. However unfairly or superficially they might be as they judge you, people do judge you by how you dress.
I got a chuckle out of the fact that this needs no explanation.
3. Many work places are relaxing their workplace attire requirements (at least out West) and this frees men from wearing suits.
The last office gig I had was as a member of the permanent staff for the Colorado General Assembly’s Joint Budget Committee. During the session, coat and tie was mandatory (the coat part even for the women on the staff) when you were doing official business. Some of the other staff organizations were much more relaxed about dress. At some point, I realized that JBC-staff-are-always-in-coat-and-tie was part of an esprit de corps thing: “We are the JBC staff, and we routinely do the impossible, so don’t you dare mistake us for being in one of those other staff groups.”
“3. Many work places are relaxing their workplace attire requirements (at least out West) and this frees men from wearing suits.”
That’s true, but as with the tech example, I think it’s more true the higher up one’s profession is. Most of the non-academic jobs, which were mostly lesser skilled jobs that didn’t require a college degree, had very strict dressing requirements, or sometimes uniform requirements. The big exception was when I worked at a call center. There were some things we couldn’t wear (like jeans), but there was much more leeway. (And we could wear jeans on weekends.)
Here is clothing for men that might be a bit on the avant-garde side:
http://www.mrporter.com/
There are also men who do “manscapping” (read: waxing) and other stuff.
Even on a more conservative front, there is a lot of good stuff out there in terms of fabrics and patterns for men’s shirts, especially if you don’t have to wear a tie.
I’m personally fond of interesting socks, though no one that I know of is doing them at a price I’m willing to pay.
They’re all $30 or $60 a pair these days.
Even if you wear a tie, just not having to wear a suit or a white shirt provides some possibilities. Different color combinations and patterns, at least. You can wear this under a suit, but it reduces the selection and is less noticeable.
I have size 15 feet. It’s hard to get socks my size. Those I do get are usually too small and I wear through them quickly. As such, I can’t imagine spending more than $10 on a pair of socks. I actually buy the six-packs.
Ah Paul Smith socks!
My usual tactic is to wait until the end of the season when everything goes on super-sale. Or to take advantage of department store deals. I am very adept at this.
But you are right that there is also plenty of nice stuff on a more traditional/conservative front.
My big rule with socks is “no white socks”
I have a modified dress code because I work with little kids, so I generally eschew the tie. During my first year, I dressed it up more because I was trying to make a good impression and blah blah blah. We don’t have “Casual Friday” so back then I went with “Bow Tie Friday” because I love the look of a hand tied bow tie and my school is very bow tie friendly.
I’ve become known as the “fun socks guy”, to the point that I often receive some really funky ones from students. It is a great way to add a bit of pep to a wardrobe because it is subtle and often unseen.
Folks are right that men have more options now than they once did, but I’d still call our options limited and, for some of us, very much so. I don’t have the impression that most of us are deep in the corporate world, but some of the more traditional institutions therein are still very old school with dress.
I won’t tell the whole story, but one time while buying dress shirts for my first round of post-college job interviews, the salesman at a high end department store in downtown Boston was beside himself that he got to help me shop, since a man in education, specifically early childhood education in private schools, would allow him to pull out all the stops with colors and patterns. He didn’t usually get to do that. This was 8 years ago, though, and things certainly have changed at least a bit since then.
I don’t wear makeup.
and a tip to the woman you know with curves: Sports-Bra. The Uniboob (sans visible clevage) is a great way to minimize how big you are.
“I’d like to see a lot more focus on how men look, how they dress, the beauty products they need to look their best (basic skin care, dudes), and of course, a bounty of fashion choices in a rainbow of colors. ”
you need only move to nyc. we have more ridiculous pants colors for men than would seem possible. i’m surprised bloomberg hasn’t moved to limit it due to concern for the eyestrain epidemic.
When the number and length of the Men’s make up counter’s begin to vie with the women’s, when men also have the option of choosing which hem length is most flattering. . .
Color and fabric are only small pieces of a very large fashion puzzle.
Zic,
Where do you think the divide stems from? As a man, I have my theories, but my hunch is that you as a woman might be more acutely attuned to the issue, particularly in regards to what drives it for women.
Maybe most men just like wearing pants and have no desire to wear kilts/dresses/skirts. I’ve ran into a small brigade of guy’s who are part of a nothing but kilts faction but they are a small minority. I’m not a Scot or a Celt, wearing kilts would be silly.
I find it interesting that you dress up to do pre-K teaching. A friend of mine is a public elementary school teacher in San Francisco and she wears jeans to work because she is on the “floor and ground with kids all the time.” Perhaps this is also East Coast v. West Coast thing.
There are different hem lines and cropped pants for men but I imagine that most men would find them silly. There was also a small trend of “office shorts” a few years ago.
Here are some examples of different “hem lines” for men:
http://www.barneys.com/Men/men,default,sc.html#http://www.barneys.com/Men/men,default,sc.html?prefn1=designer&prefv1=Thom%20Browne
Here is some non-standard pants stuff:
http://www.barneys.com/Men/men,default,sc.html#http://www.barneys.com/Men/men,default,sc.html?prefn1=designer&prefv1=Rick%20Owens|Rick%20Owens%20DRKSHDW&start=0&sz=96
I don’t think most men would want to dress in either group, spend that kind of money on clothing (or be able to afford to spend that kind of money), and I imagine if a guy showed up dressed in any of the pants/clothing above for a date, an overwhelming majority of women and men would find their date looked absolutely silly and be turned off.
When I taught (TA and adjunct teaching at college), I usually wore the full shirt and tie and nice shoes, at least in the last few years that I did it.
I did it because it made me feel more professional. Perhaps this feeling came about because as a general rule I’m a pretty sloppy dresser, and if I dress up, then I feel as if I’m really doing work. At my current job (at an archive in a library), I pretty much wear whatever I want, but I usually don’t have to interact with the public, and I have the privilege of having supposedly special skills that come with (almost, knock on wood) having a PHD in history. (At the same time, I think someone with a BA in history, who did really well and knows their history and knows how to write, could probably do the job just as well as I can….but there’s a certain “prestige” factor that I can trade off of.)
Pierre,
University teaching seems to be all over the map in terms of dress and it could depend on the university/college and department. At my undegrad, I had a few professors who wore shirts and ties but also a lot who were a bit more causal. You also had some professors with a more arty/bohemian way of dressing.
In grad school for theatre, the dress was much more casual. One of my theatre history professors wore a shirt and tie. Most people were more casual. This was par for the course. I think it would be strange for a theatre professor to teach in a suit.
It is art school, the suit would be wrong.
Law School had most of the professors in more traditional business attire but there was a good amount of business casual as well. One older professor commented about how when he was a law student, students were expected to wear suits and ties. He said he liked it now that everyone was more “casual”
My mom can’t stand to watch Mad Men because she was a young woman during that era and she hated that they had to dress up and wear make-up all the time.
ND,
The schools I used to work at were all casual, but that was for everyone. My current school has a much stricter dress code, but I am not subject to it because I’m in PreK. So I usually wear slacks and a sweater or polo. A tie is just impractical when you’re bending down all day. And most of my clothes are from the Gap or JCrew… I don’t really break out the good stuff because of the high mess factor.
ND,
Yeah, I agree. Even at the schools where I was and the (history) departments I was in, people’s choices varied widely.
I don’t know, but I have hope that things will change.
1770’s. French Revolution.
Before then men wore fripperies and frapperies to beat the women (also gobs of fur, and wigs.).
i do agree that there are lines of gendered clothing that still don’t get crossed but things are kinda fluid out here. the rest of ‘murica, i know not of.
also, as you go up in the money dept, the array of men’s accoutrements/junk goes up significantly. if you have a molton brown by you, check that out. it’s very expensive, but the men’s and women’s sections are about equal. nyc is dotted with a bunch of boutiques and stuff peddlers that would have been called “metrosexual” ten years ago but is basically accepted at this point as being a thing you do if you are a dude who does that thing.
that said i have to balk at purple pants on anyone (earlier i’d had in mind the purple pedal pushers i saw a guy wearing earlier this week – green tweed jacket and i think a gingam shirt of a blue/white variety), and teal shirts on dudes. it just looks terribad.
I feel like SF and NYC (and probably LA) are about the same with fluidity and expensive clothing boutiques aimed at men and men alone. You are right that 10 years ago this was called “metrosexual”
But almost every decent-sized metro area in the US is going to have at least one clothing store/boutique dedicated just to men and the clothing at said store will be on the pricey side.
http://www.contextclothing.com/
Context Clothing is in Madison, Wisconsin but I can think of or find a Context like store in almost every decent sized city in the United States.
The money angle is a good point. We still have a concept of men should not spend beyond X amount on certain things like a haircut. A lot of guy’s pride themselves on not spending more than X for a haircut. It seems basically accepted that women will spend a lot more and get some bragging rights about how much a hair cut costs for them.
Skatetown.
Zic,
I see plenty of young men (by young I mean between the ages of 16-19) who care about certain items of clothing. The big thing seems to be sneakers. There is a sneakstore about a mile down the road from my apartment. Every few weeks, I see a bunch of teenage boys waiting around for hours before the store opens to get some sort of special sneaker I never heard of.
I have never seen teenage girls or women wait around for hours to get a unique item of clothing.
Humph. that says a lot about it right there. Shoes as badges, part of a uniform — things that the entire herd has.
A woman generally won’t want to wear the same dress another woman is wearing at a party. (me? who the fig cares. me, you’ll remember! Well, at least at the parties i’m allowed to go to. )
zic,
I think you’re wrong about men not needing to care about how they look. I think that appearing to care about how you look is gendered (effeminate/gay/yadda). But there’s a hella lotta difference between what a man wears to work, what a gentleman wears to work, and what a dude wears clubbing.
I also think that it’s racial, as well. Black men seem allowed more leeway about dressing, and about caring about how they dress.
Obama kinda screwed up here, saying such things in public context. He did apologise to her and probably ought to have done.
Fact is, Kamala Harris is a good looking woman. Thing is, every woman knows the difference between a prurient leer and a glance of frank admiration. Trying to keep that sort of thing bottled up only makes things worse. Women look at men, men look at women, men look at men. Etcetera.
Yes, this is definitely a case where your Rule 1 (and Rule 2) applies.
I would venture to say the contexts in which it’s acceptable to make public comments on the aesthetic pleasure one derives from a fellow professional’s appearance are nearly nonexistent.
While I think there are a number of contexts in which such a comment can be seemingly innocuous, these contexts are likely so as a function of some underlying ugliness thereby making the comment not-so-innocuous.
Should Obama have said it? No. Though it appears he has taken the right tack in rectifying his error.
I think that Obama messed up in a time-space manner. It wasn’t wrong for him to refer to Kamala Harris has attractive per se. It was the context of the comment that made it wrong.
Noting how physically attractive other people are is a problematic area. People generally like to be thought of as good-looking, especially if it matches their self-perception. In this post-sexual revolution age, we are also supposed to be at comfort with all aspects of sexuality, theoretically. At the same time we are dealing with the legacy of sexism and pre-feminist times, where the value of women was to be a sort of beautiful accessory to a man and to take care of their needs and thats about it. Its some times hard to work all these things out.
My “professional” life is currently divided into the Apollonian academic and the Dionysian music scene- in the former, no way can you do that; in the latter, yes, all the fishing time.
Ah, like the Apollonian/Dionsyian struggle Beethoven so sublimely constructs in the 2nd movement of his Fourth Piano Concerto. His musical landscape often does represent all that is, that was, and shall forever be.
And for the record, his resolution from the orchestral e minor section to the solo piano introduction in D major slays the Dionysian beast. Another great example of this is in the Sanctus of his Missa Solemnis. Just absolutely, heartbreakingly, beautiful. This is music to live for. Or die for…
1) Ayup.
2) I found myself thinking how nice it was to be mildly irritated by an inappropriate comment that was eloquently apologized for, instead of, you know, despairing that men in power will ever stop fishing their young subordinates, like I did about that last Democratic president. So, on the whole, I’m feeling pretty okay about Obama right now.
(Er, on the sexual politics front, anyway. Still PO’d about some of the “take Bush’s beachfronts into governmental overreach and run with them” stuff. The latter kills people.)
You’re definitely right. I think he was trying to have the joke work at the expense of AGs and not Harris, but as she’s the only person referenced, that was… not going to happen.
Am I the only one that read about this and wondered about how the other attorney generals felt about being told they weren’t good looking enough to the entire county?
Re-reading this I see I could have probably jammed the word “about” in a few more times if I really tried.
I was about to say I think you’re just about right about what the real controversy really should have been about.
I guess the question is whether the man in question would have made a similar comment about a male co-worker; “hey, nice suit!” or “damn, didn’t know we were havin’ a gun show!” or something like that.
I recall working in an office that was about half-American and half-Brit. One of the Americans complimented a very well-built British co-worker on a new, colorful blouse by saying “Nice top!”, which she took to mean something else entirely.
Good looking chicks know they are good looking and everyone else does too.
They also tend to think of themselves as women.
I actual use “gals” more.
Relieving to know that Obama really can fuck up bigtime (and apologize for it).
At least with him, we know we’re not at risk of improv comedy.
This is interesting context: Study: Any Description Of A Woman’s Appearance Hurts With Voters
So apparently Obama wasn’t doing her any favors politically.