Oh! those appearances that count

Not those wretched appearances again?

Well yes. But as this is basically just another feminist post, those of you who are disinterested in such wicked subversive thinking, now know to skip it.

I was busily surfing away, to see what the latest tips were on going for job interviews and presenting oneself, to be hit with some seriously horrific recommendations.

One site I found was a few years old (ie three or four). But still, that is recent enough.

It was about the airline industry and applying to be a whatever-they-are-called these days employees. The ones who serve food and drinks, try and flog you stuff at the airline’s inflated prices and show you what to do with a safety jacket.

In the event of a disaster they are meant to switch from being a food server in a sloping restaurant and a salesperson, to a superperson who can rescue everyone, or at least tell you how to rescue yourself.

Well, holy shit! Naturally for this multi-purpose person, the most important thing for a woman to be selected for the job is that she should be wearing nail polish at her interview.

Right. I’ll know that if you aren’t wearing nail polish the next time I fly, that you are one dubious cabin attendant/flight attendant/stewardess/waitress/salesperson. Perhaps you might be useful though in case of emergency.

Everyone expects people in the serving industry to look smart and preferably not drop their hair in your food (that one would rule me out straightaway, far too much long hair). But really, do they still have to be wearing heels, skirts, tights, make-up, nail polish, immaculate hair do, blah blah….

Surely all we want on an aeroplane (assuming we travel on those, which I don’t) is someone clean, efficient, tidy – and in the case of any problems – extremely alert and knowledgeable. Not a Barbie doll.

Onto the next site I found. It was about preparing American interns – whatever they are – for interviews. Something to do with Bill Clinton is the limit of my knowledge about interns.

Pantsuits (uh??!!) I think that means trousers, are not recommended for a first interview for women. [Trousers/pants are possibly acceptable later once you have proved you have decent legs at the minimum.] Skirt and jacket, or dress and jacket are the required gear for the first interview.

And why, might I ask does wearing a skirt make your brain function any better at work? What sort of interview is this? One with Sharon Stone?

Perhaps, on those grounds, it would be appropriate to ask men to turn up in skirts too? Not a problem for Scottish men who could wear their wonderful kilts. With nothing underneath.

But at the second interview, the restrictions could be relaxed and the men too could wear the trousers. Once we have seen their legs, and….

I have long, slim legs just for the record. But why should I display them if I choose not to? Why should I shave them? Why wear tights? Male readers out there, you try going to work every fucking day in a pair of tights, a skirt, and stupid high heels – because that will seriously make you work much better, won’t it? And when you have found it doesn’t, stop prescribing what women should wear.

I think we could learn a lot from our Indian colleagues. Love their leggings and tunics/saris, suits everyone.

I know appearances matter, and that everyone is judged on first impression, and how they look, and all the rest of it. I spent years telling men what colour shirt and tie to wear so their image was appropriate to the message they were giving on television or at a press conference. I didn’t tell women not to wear trousers. And that’s the difference. I didn’t usually need to tell the women what to wear, they had grown up with a lifetime of being judged on their appearance.

“Beauty is youth, youth beauty” — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

(with apologies to Mr Keats for that one).

Meanwhile, moving swiftly onto books, although not off topic in terms of victimising women.

Why are all the so-called ‘popular’ easy-read novels full of abuse against women? I get given books to read and just despair at the amount of violence – sexual abuse, rape, forcible drug addiction, power games and physical violence, almost forgot – murder, that are in these books.

What a sick society we live in, that a) people buy these books and b) people write them and make money out of them.

Oh – what do I do with those ‘sick books’? No, I don’t recycle them at all. I censor them and chuck them in the bin, which is exactly where they belong because all they do is continue to stereotype women as objects and fuel people’s whacky fantasies.

Even reading Mills and Boon where woman meets man, falls out, falls in love and lives happily ever after is better than sick and depraved so-called novels.

Discrimination against women really does still exist. Honestly. Even in our civilised office-bound western societies. Although no-one wants to believe that.

1) Why should women be expected to dress differently to men, or spend hours going through some crass ‘beauty’ regime to fit in with patriarchal and societal requirements to prove they can do a job? If short fat ugly old men can land good jobs – the same should apply to women.

2) There are more women victims in modern-day books (they are not novels) than there are men. Now, why is that I wonder?