In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Work

Why “I prefer small boobs” isn’t helping

“I like small boobs.” “I actually prefer untrimmed pubic hair.” “Ew, skinny girls! Eat a sandwich, amirite?” They’re inevitable contributions to any thread discussing women’s bodies, always offered by men as a word of comfort to insecure women or as valuable male insight into the male gaze.

Thanks for thinking of us, guys, but trust me: We get insight into the male gaze every day. The real impact of the male gaze is about way more than beer commercials, Playboy pictorials, and who does and doesn’t have to pay her own bar tab.

Suing for Looks Discrimination

Pretty people finish first — that’s a well-documented phenomenon. Folks who fall outside of cultural beauty norms — who are fatter or not white or less white or older or whatever else — make less money over their lifetimes. Economics professor Daniel S. Hamermesh suggests that people who are discriminated against because of their looks should be able to sue if they can show that their employer demonstrated a pattern of looks-based discrimination.

Now, suing over discrimination isn’t exactly new, especially where physical appearance is involved. Women have been on the losing end of those battles for years, and courts have held that women can be fired from their jobs for not wearing enough make-up or not wearing revealing uniforms (women have also been fired for being too sexy or too fat or too-whatever-else). But Hamermesh isn’t really concerned about women — he’s worried about men, of course:

Another scintillating point argued by Hamermesh is that while women often bear the brunt of looks bias in the mating arena, men are more affected by looks discrimination in the professional world, since their gender still comprises the majority of the working population.

“Most men will work, regardless of their looks. Women still have some choice about whether to work for pay,” says Hamermesh. “If a woman is bad-looking and she knows she will be penalized in the workplace, she will be less likely to work.”

Hamermesh backs up the bold assertion with study statistics he published in the American Economic Review in 1994 with co-author Jeff Biddle, Ph.D.

In the study, women ranked as the most unattractive seventh of the female population were five percentage points less likely to work than average-looking women. Meanwhile, women who ranked in the top third of attractiveness were five percentage points more likely to work than the average.

I’m quoted in response. You can head over there to read it.

Penelope Trunk’s new “Blueprint for a Woman’s Life:” Same as the old blueprint. Sigh.

I think that Penelope Trunk sometimes gives great career advice. I like that she values being lost, being open and honest, and making interesting mistakes on the way to finding an interesting and happy life. And even when I strongly disagree with her she never bores me.

She really pisses me off sometimes, but she never bores me. Until last week, when she basically tried to pass off “make it your life’s ambition to find and keep a husband” as groundbreaking life advice for women.

I debated posting about her “Blueprint for a Woman’s Life,” which is a plan she wishes she had followed between 18 and 45 and now wants to give to young (straight, educated, wealthy) women (who want marriage and kids with a wealthy man), because I think she’d loooooooove to have the attention of pissed-off feminists. But then I started reading all the blog comments that were like “OMG, this is the best and wisest thing that you could ever have said!” and then I Feminist-Hulked out.

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Strength in cupcakes

“Women are girly. Again,” she says. And apparently, that sucks.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Peg Aloi bemoans the death of the “tough gal,” as evidenced by blogs about cupcakes, gardening, Hello Kitty, and knitting. Women write about cuddly kitties. BUST is sponsoring a craft fair, holy shit! Feminism has not only come to an end but is actually regressing, and it’s all because of heirloom fucking tomatoes. Thanks, ladies.

It would appear that the world, as seen through Ms. Aloi’s TV, has become squishy, pink, and birthday cake-scented. (Oh, my God, how cool would a birthday cake world be, at least for a few hours?) The view from my window looks nothing like delicious baked goods, though, so I thought I’d share some of that view with Ms. Aloi.

Before we begin: Ms. Aloi, most of the examples of “tough gals” you provide hit somewhere around the mid- to late-’80s. Blogs, in the form we enjoy today, didn’t really come into popularity until the late ’90s. Women in the Age of Ripley still were knitting and baking cupcakes–they just weren’t blogging about it, because, y’know, no blogs.

Moving on:

Those “tough gal” examples cover a fairly vast range: leather-wearing rock rebels like Joan Jett and Courtney Love*; supernatural kickers of ass like Xena, Buffy, and Ellen Ripley**; iron-spirited fighters for right like Norma Rae and Erin Brockovich. You identify them as “strong, sexy, and take no crap.”

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Class war? Or one-sided attack?

If I don’t have it, why should you?

It’s the basis of the resentment I hear and see on the part of people who snarl about those unions (who get so! much!) those striking Verizon workers, those students on the J-1 visa, teachers, public service workers, and others. Instead of thinking, “Hey, that’s fucked. We should both make a living wage and be treated with dignity and respect by the places we work for, your fight is my fight,” a lot of people seem to think, “Why should you get this when I don’t?” or “You should be grateful for what you have.”

One thing that struck me about the foreign exchange student protest in Pennsylvania is that they were quite clear in their desire to not take jobs away from Americans. Our fight, as far as they were concerned, is their fight. They’re linked.

So when I hear lectures from yet another person who embraces Voluntary Simplicity (something I practice as well, by the way, though I am ambivalent about some aspects of it), I have to roll my eyes at the preaching–“You all are too materialistic. The people in many Global South nations are poor but happy.” And I think to myself, Really? Have you been to an EPZ? I mean, without the official minders flanking you? Have you actually bothered to talk to some of the people there, who are trying to unionize in the face of sometimes brutal repression?

I think sometimes it’s too easy to snark on people and roll our eyes when we perceive ourselves as having less. But the thing is–like with the Verizon workers–what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another, and a living wage is more than the bare bones minimum. These jobs are not easy, the people who do them work hard, and it should make us all livid when pundits declare that CEO’s make so much because they work hard (and imply that the striking workers–or any worker–isn’t working hard and that’s why they aren’t making about $6M a year in salary and bonuses). I mean, not for nothing, but the people who teach our kids work hard, the nurses and assistants who care for us in the hospital are working their tails off, the people who pick up our trash and vacuum our offices are not exactly slacking, and the people who ring up our sales and make our coffee do not have what I’d call cushy jobs.

What you get when you point this out is a boatload of contempt–These people could just start their own business, and then they’d be fine. They should work harder! They all have flatscreen TV’s and rip off the system–I know because my sister’s coworker’s cousin saw someone buy steak with their food stamps five years ago. I don’t have the pay they want/their benefits/their job protection, so why should they?

It’s another side to the “I got mine, so screw you,” attitude that poisons the atmosphere. These folks who complain so bitterly about these supposedly spoiled workers never bother looking at the C-level executives, who make millions (I am not exaggerating. Check out their proxy statements sometime–it is eye-opening.) and who get very generous exit packages when they’re fired. The pay of CEO’s went up 27% in 2010, compared to 2% for the average worker. And they aren’t taxed at a particularly high rate on their stock assets or stock sale profits, which are classed under capital gains taxes (which have been slashed since the Regan era). The ultra-wealthy aren’t paying nearly the percentage that any of us do, and asking that they start is making conservatives in the US hyperventilate. Oh, it’s fine for us to pay our share, but it’s horrible and awful to ask that someone who’s making six or seven figures to do the same.

It used to be that US citizens prided themselves on the fact that you could build a good life for yourself–work hard and save, and you could have a decent quality of life. But no more–our income disparity is growing here–and nothing good ever comes from such severe wealth inequality. You want to hear people singing The Internationale? Keep that shit up.

Now, I suppose that makes me a class warrior. Which is funny, since I’m seeing a class war, but it’s more of an all-out attack on poor, working-class, and even middle-class people. And if we want a more just and a more equitable society, we have to know that we cannot stop striving for that if we get a victory for ourselves. As long as working-class people are squeezed out of jobs and denied the right to collectively bargain, my life and my security is at risk. As long as poor people are shamed and vilified for being poor, we’re all at risk for being cast out the minute something catastrophic happens, we lose our money, and we make one “unwise” choice.

You’re Not Fired, But…

Recently, I have found myself in the difficult position of having two people who work for me screw things up spectacularly. Fortunately, not life or death things, but things that are significant and important. One of them is just unqualified overall for his job. The other has done excellent work for me in the past, but is preparing to leave her job in the near future and has what I think is best described as a severe case of senioritis (sloppiness due to laziness, coasting on past success, etc.). We’re now at the point where the need for training and mentoring are being surpassed by the need to explain that getting fired or demoted is a very real possibility.

My current boss has (kindly) described me as the sort of person who is wholly unafraid to ask fairly pointed (although still respectful) questions of authority figures, particularly people who outrank me*. And it is true, I am known for being fairly blunt. But I will be damned if I have figured out a good way to tell the people who work for me who are screwing up that they’ve screwed up in ways that could/are going to get them fired.**

I’m good at the warnings and the soft-pedal, “Hey, I’ve fixed it for now, but in the future…” and “I do understand how this got overlooked, but it’s one of those things that requires a close eye…” and other things that stop short of “Your conduct was unprofessional, unacceptable, and leads me to question whether or not you’ll be able to continue in this position.” Or “You have screwed up so many times and so badly that you are getting fired.”

I don’t think it’s ever easy to tell someone that they’re not doing well at their job. And there’s no great way to fire someone. You can do it without being an ass, but it requires a serious level of confrontation and can get awkward easily. Getting fired is intensely personal and intensely stressful, and knowing that you’re going to inflict that on someone can be its own challenge.

I think the difficulties inherent in that kind of interaction are exacerbated for women: the desire not to be a bitch, and the constant cultural reminders to be nice. It’s also much harder in an environment where women are such a minority of the total workforce. (The Army is roughly 15 to 20% women, and they’re not evenly distributed.) You’re already stuck in the nice/weak/tough/competent abyss, which is wretched. And that’s even before you get to the being firm/being a bitch line. There’s a significant (as in notable, not necessarily large in number) subset of men in the Army who think that women are per se unqualified to be there and any inability to handle something like this gets attributed to being a woman, not to finding it challenging to tell people they’re screw-ups.

The Army is also big on its leaders being able to get people in line and yelling/chewing people out is definitely part of the professional culture. But there’s a significant difference between that and explaining to someone what all of their professional deficits and failures are. It’s always going to be a challenge, but I wish there were a better way to mitigate “She’s being a bitch,” versus “She’s my supervisor and is telling me I screwed up.”

*It’s sort of hard to explain to someone who’s not familiar with military culture exactly how this operates, but suffice it to say that ordinarily, a very high level of deference to people who outrank you is expected.

**The military is actually a LOT better at this than most civilian employers. We have counseling forms and standard language to inform Soldiers that their conduct isn’t meeting the standard and that continued failures to meet the standard could result in their separation from the military. There’s a place for the leader to explain what they will do to address the issue and room on the counseling for follow up about how things worked out. If they’re used well, they’re actually extremely useful.