Why Using Your Looks To Get Ahead In Business Is A Really Bad Idea
December 17, 2009
by Janis
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
It can be awfully easy to justify this to yourself, and you may even manage to tell yourself that it’s a feminist act, despite the fact that as a woman who has learned to make sexism function for her (and only her) you are now personally invested in keeping sexism alive and well, and hence have become something of a collaborator. But — and here’s the crucial part — it’s not only bad for the rest of the office, women in general, and the world at large, but believe it or not, it’s a terribly bad idea for you, too.
So I’m not going to tell you that it’s anti-feminist or anti-woman or nasty or bitchy or manipulative (even though, in every instance I’ve ever seen in a fifteen-year corporate career, it is all those things). I’m not going to tell you reason why it’s bad for The Sisterhood for you to flash a little stocking-top to get ahead. I’m going to tell you why it’s bad for YOU. If you’ve ever confused letting your lacey bra top peek out over a too-low shell during a management meeting for a pro-feminist act, you need to read these simple facts from a woman who’s been in the for-profit and non-profit sectors for A Long Time Now, and in marketing and publicity, one of the worst offenders for “Silly me, was that my black lace garter showing?” idiocy.
By the way, you may detect in here a few notes of annoyance born of personal experience, and you’d be right. Few women with any extended corporate experience have escaped the sting of women who behave this way entirely. But I survived with grace and a still-growing career, while the women who taught me these lessons will likely do neither, and for the following reasons:
1) You cannot manage women using this method.
“Do YOU find it a breeze to manage men but always resort to snapping out, ‘Look, just DO IT, okay?’ while managing women?”
Sure, you can get the occasional lollipop out of the guys at the office by playing kiss-kiss-don’t-touch with them. But that trick will only work on the guys. And –news flash here — it’s not 1972, and you’re not the only chick at the office anymore. There will be actual other female humans there, and they will view your manipulation with revulsion or, if they plan to use the same tactics themselves, with suspicious jealousy. This is why most women who use their looks to suck up to the men at the office turn into shrill, intolerant death pigs from hell when they have to manage or work with other women. The fishnet stockings won’t get you where you want to go with them, so you’ll resort to nastiness and yelling.
And don’t tell me you haven’t. If you’re the seamed-stocking type, you have. You may think the other women in the office are your personal cheering section who high-five one another over your every imagined victory, but they aren’t. Alternately, you may like to tell yourself that every single woman you’ve ever worked with since the beginning of time is just coincidentally a brick-stupid, unmanageable bitch because you can’t figure out how to get them to just shut up and do what you say, but they aren’t.
Any management technique that doesn’t work on half the population is a management technique that doesn’t work.
2) This technique means that any woman in the office who is thinner, younger, or prettier than you is The Enemy.
“Is YOUR first thought when shaking the hand of the new woman in the office the contemplation of her dress size relative to yours?”
Sure, you may like to tell yourself that you’re a big feminist for gaming the rules to get what you want, but when you put a steak knife in the back of the thinner, cuter new woman in the office — you know, that bitch with larger breasts? — you can’t possibly defend that as feminism in a million years, honey.
When you use your Feminine Wiles to get ahead, every other woman is your enemy. That breeds backstabbing, and don’t pretend otherwise. Keep your hemline lower, and learn to network with other women. Trust me, you’ll need it in the future, and that women in the office who you think isn’t onto your resentment or sabotage?
She’s onto you, honey. She’ll outlive you. And she’s got a long memory.
And now that we’re talking about The Future, here’s a little tip that will be of particular interest as the years go by:
3) This technique will fail to work once you are over 45. Or, depending on your genetics and whether you avoided tanning as a teenager, 40.
“Are YOU already saving up for botox treatments and tit lifts as professional image management tax write-offs?”
When you begin to get yourself into a more advanced management position is when you’ll need to learn real leadership and what it means, and when you’ll need to manage and direct a more diverse group of people.
Not only will you find this hard to do if your people skills consist of making blow-job faces at the men and screaming at the women, but you won’t even be able to make those blow-job faces as well as you used to once you start getting little wrinkles around your lip line. Men do not relish the idea of getting an illicit behind-the-copier blow-job from a sharpei, and facelifts look freaky.
We all age, some better than others, but the truth remains – we all age. And any management technique that is guaranteed to fail and leave you floundering just when you need to rely on it the most is not the technique you want to cultivate.
Besides, if you’ve trained the guys in the office to respond well to perky breasts and lip gloss, don’t be surprised when they start responding to someone else’s perkier breasts and glossier lips when yours start losing their youthful glow.
Simply put, you will become the corporate equivalent of a bitter ex-trophy-wife if you don’t learn how to get what you want while wearing a turtleneck and pantsuits. Not that I’m talking about looking like a nun or being embarrassed to dress with some sense of fashion and style. Nail polish isn’t evil. What I’m talking about is concentrating on working for what you need as a manager or employee instead of wheedling for it. Wheedlers aren’t leaders, and wheedlers aren’t good mentors.
You will need a management technique that works on women as well as men, works even when you aren’t the only rose in the garden, and works as you age. Some offices are just too toxic for any management technique to work well for women, but some aren’t. If you’re lucky enough to find one that gives you some satisfaction and a good chance to get ahead, invest in learning some people and project management skills that will stand you, your company, and your colleagues in good stead for your entire career.
Understanding this difference is a huge part of what makes a leader, after all. So, no more excuses for short skirts and fuck-me pumps. No more, “It’s a man’s world and I’m only playing by their rules!” No more, “Why shouldn’t I make sexism work to my advantage?”
You shouldn’t because you’re a woman, and in the long run, there is no way to make patriarchy work to your advantage. If you kid yourself that there is, then you have turned into a collaborator and a stupid one at that, because it will bite you on the ass later. You have turned into a woman who, thinking that she has hacked the patriarchy’s magic code, is now invested in keeping it around. This isn’t good for other women, and as I hope the above tips have convinced you, it’s not really good for you, either.
There are other issues surrounding the larger subject here — how to get things done as a woman in a business environment — and they are complex, contradictory, and occasionally discouraging. I’m not addressing the entire massive topic here, just this one little piece of it. There are other, equally daunting topics to cover, including “how not to be dismissed as a worthless bimbo just because you are thin and pretty,” “how not to be dismissed as an unfortunate joke because you aren’t,” and “how to walk the razor’s edge between being a bitch and being a pushover without getting your feet sliced off.”
But I’m not covering those today. I don’t know if anyone can. What I do know is that if you think you can carry the scorpion of corporate sexism across the river on your back safely, you’re wrong. And the only way you can make sexism work for you as a woman is to make it fail for every other woman around you.
And you know what? It’s the only way that other chick who wears stilettos and lace garters to the office can make it work for her, too. Better watch your back, because she sure won’t.
And if the nightmare of the 2008 presidential election cycle taught us nothing, it’s that women desperately need a network of reliable women who really do have our backs, so we don’t have to be the only ones watching them, because in that atmosphere, we’re all sprouting knives eventually.
Leave the platform pumps and thong underwear at home. Your feet will thank you now, the other women at the office will thank you tomorrow, and you will thank you fifteen years from now. I can absolutely guarantee it.
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Bravo Janis!
There is nothing wrong with looking your best at work; best meaning professional. In industry you don’t see men showing off their boxer shorts at board meetings, and the men I have seen that show chest hair don’t get taken seriously. Professional means clean lines, clean fit, and no body parts falling out or undergarments revealing themselves. As a women, if you give off the message in the workplace as “sexy” that will be all that anyone sees when you are younger. If that is your top asset, kiss it goodbye when you get older. Sexy doesn’t buy you staying power, just men who will use you and throw you away when they are done.
I had a woman boss for 5 years whowas/is a perfect example of the behavior described in reason #1 and she still views all female employees as “brick-stupid, unmanageable” bitches. Absolutely spot on, Janis.
Good post.
I’ve been watching some of those TV shows where they try to steer teenagers in the right direction, America’s strictest parents and such. What’s gotten my attention is the girls who almost always dress down, try to appear sexy, show as much skin as possible. What’s been interesting is some of the pseudo mothers who talk to these girls about self esteem, about how beautiful they are, about how their self worth is not just about how sexy they appear. You can see it click in some of these girl’s heads, OMG, you mean I’m not just a sexual commodity? I can have some value in this society as an actual full person?
“Sexy doesn’t buy you staying power, just men who will use you and throw you away when they are done.”
Not according to all those seething, bitter male liberals who seem to think that Sarah Palin is Ming the Merciless because they want to fuck her and she won’t let them …
Well I have seen men use their hot looks to get ahead in sales also and it does work for them too while they are still good looking. There is one rep for a laboratory supply house who gets sent around to almost every lab because he is so hot, when usually we freeze out unwanted sales reps and screw them over with the computerized door locking systems. It is true however that any strategy that works on only half the population is a bad strategy if you work with a cross section of people. I would add that I’ve noticed people who try these sexist antics are usually blind to cases when they are not effective and they are usually very predictable so they are generally easy to set up and screw over. If the people you work with don’t play by fair rules then there is no reason why you should. I don’t suggest abandoning all civility but I’m on board for Robin Hood style actions.
I also have to wonder how many people will pretend to see a “contradiction” between this article and my support for Sarah Palin … of course, because we all know that using your looks to get ahead and simply being attractive through no credit or fault of your own are the same thing. *rolls eyes halfway to Pasadena*
Most people use what ever advantage they have been handed to try to get ahead. Good looking people have an easier time of it than plain people and that has been shown in many studies. I don’t see how this relates to Palin. She used what ever she was handed to get ahead and to solve problems experienced by average people. The people in DC use their pedigrees to get into the ruling social class and the universities of choice so they can run government. I don’t see any difference between what they do and what Palin does except she has lived the life of a regular person and has an actual understanding of what people need and the elitists in DC only have a bunch of idealistic goals that aren’t what people need. I don’t think Palin uses her sexuality it is just men who can’t perceive her any other way because of the sexist culture they live in. And I also agree with who ever said a few days ago that many men stuff themselves with pornography and as a result they live in a different world than we do and they do not live in the real world. Clearly the Palin problem is a male problem in both parties.
I have been thinking of this article Janis wrote while doing my work and I think what she describes in her article about women who use sex to get ahead in business, who then don’t know what to do when they have to work with women (because they are one trick ponies) also describes why women audiences can’t relate to media images of women. So media women learn to get ahead by displaying behaviors that attract men who are the ones who do the hiring and writing. Then when these women are in movies or TV they keep doing what have been winning strategies for them up to this point. Only now their audience is at least half female and it doesn’t work with them. They come off as fake and unrelatable at best and as doing some bizarre kabuki performance at worst to female audiences. Too bad media men can’t see that man view is not the only world view and in fact not even the dominant would view. This as it would save them a bunch of money and since the media companies are all stock issuing companies they should be concerned about making money. Well back to work. Thought provoking article Janis!
Great article, Janis. It’s so important for women to reflect on how the patriarchy manipulates our behavior at times. There’s no other way for us to stop being a part of the patriarchy if we don’t acknowledge what we are doing.
I remember as a young woman, after having job after job after job where my female bosses tormented me and my male bosses were usually condescending at worst, I began to say that I hated working for women. That I’d prefer to work for a man. I had several sexist male bosses at this point in my life, but my female bosses were the ones who would bring me to tears. This article sums up why and it was really a revelation to read this.
Now fortunately, later on in life I’ve had amazing female bosses who have been so competent and such incredible mentors for me that I no longer feel this way.
“Good looking people have an easier time of it than plain people and that has been shown in many studies.”
I have always called bullshit on these “studies,” personally. I had way too much experience being thought a complete idiot when I was actually (to be honest) the smartest person in the room. Men seem to look at a good-looking woman and think, “I’d fuck her, so she must be stupid.” Either that or, “I’d fuck her but she won’t let me, so she’s a bitch and I hate her.”
Ask any beautiful woman whether her looks attract more decent men or more assholes, and I know what her answer will be, because it’s my answer. They either think you’re stupid or they hate you for not forking yourself over immediately. Dismissal or resentment is what you usually get out of them (especially if you tell them they diagonalized the wrong Hamiltonian or put the wrong limits on their integral, then they look at you like they’d like to slit your throat).
Well beautiful women would likely attract more of all kinds of men, assholes as well as good specimens, than plain women(same for good looking men). And you can tell that women who are considered beautiful often are alone or go from one unfulfilling relationship to the next if you look at actresses and models (of course they also have a higher percentage of drug abuse than the general population and a higher need for outside approval).
Here is something that would be interesting to do for people who work in these situations. Try behavior modification on these people. Get yourself a lab book and write down your observations daily. Pick two unacceptable behaviors, and two positive behaviors you see these people doing. Decide how to punish the negative behaviors and how to reward the positive behaviors. Then do it and note the results. It would be interesting to see if you can make a difference in their behavior. It would be more interesting if it was tried in several different settings by different people. It might work, it might not and one reason I can think of for failure is because these people take their social cues from the general society not the small group you are stuck in with them. But even if your experiment is a bomb you will have gathered useful information and you will also have had some sense of control of the situation. Then look at the situation and reevaluate your behavior modification efforts and your decision to stick to a situation that is so exasperating.
LOL I love Janis. I will stick up for anything you have to say and it is consistently wonderful. So I think we need some tips on how pretty women can tame down their looks and how to play around men wielding sexism as a form of workplace competition aka (“she’s pretty” “she’s hot” “it’s easy to see how she got that job”)
Unfortunately it’s very very hard for a woman to dress herself corporate these days without spending a lot of money as the cheaper suits are all extremely fitted and look sexy…plus women think this is the norm for women’s suiting.
For instance, I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford higher end suiting options like Brooks Brother’s. I also have one..and only one..tailored suit. And it is indispensable. I know that a suit is one I want to buy, when, for instance, I see a comment from a customer that says “obviously fine crafted suit but not fitted enough.” That tells me that it is a good, high end suit, because a good woman’s suit will not be tight. It will be clean, well fitted, and look outstanding. Unfortunately, in any department store and retail store, except the maternal section of macy’s, you will find women’s suits that are cut to accent the shape of her body, and look like they just stepped off a CSI episode.
What I do now, is I wear my skirt suit, which is an A-line tailored suit, and the only one I own to interviews, and when I’m dressing normally for work, I have a pair of well fitted woolen trousers with a cashmere sweater over a nice buttoned shirt, and I find this look, which mimics men’s, to be ideal. Skirts are too dangerous, even suited ones.
if you’re a lawyer though or any traditional profession then you have to wear skirts.
Lawyers do have a stranger dress code than most … but I’ve found that chinos and loafers tend to be the easiest thing to wear, with a blazer. It’s really not that hard, but other circumstances may be more complicated.
Janis, this is good advice because just the other day I was surprised to find chino’s on the shelves in Banana Republic, having thought they phased them out. I always got good responses in chinos and I think for most jobs these are practical for women; yes ditch the heels. Unfortunately the sexualization of women has become so common that just two years ago I couldn’t find a cheap pair of women’s patent work pumps. Payless did not have heels lower than 2 1/2, and only one pair of work pumps in 2 1/2 that looked too high. And don’t even try to buy a suit less than $200. You’ll look cheap, and sexy.
oh I wanted to mention that that seems to have changed and now it is very easy to find a cheap pair of nice work pumps.
It’s not just about avoiding the sex-object sexism and appearing unprofessional and incompetent, but also having a strong, confident stride, which you can’t pull off no matter how good you are at walking in heels.
Under pants heels are ok, but you still won’t have the same easy stride and you’ll look awkward when you walk.
The one thing I like about heels is that I LOOM when I wear them.
I’m tall-side-of-average at 5’8″, so I can push 5’11″ in heels.
But I like to walk outside during lunch (good exercise and it clears my head), and while I can do it in heels, it’s not as comfortable and my feet REALLY don’t like it.
Aside, I’d also hesitate to say that attractive women have to watch what they wear more than other women do. It’s true that we can hang from that gallows a bit more quickly and may need to think three and four times rather than just twice, but I’ve seen inappropriate clothing (including one incredibly poorly chosen bellydancer costume for Halloween!) on conventionally plain women — and anyone can wear too way much makeup anc act stupid. Unfortunately.
We may need to think a bit more about pulling a Sarah Palin and putting our hair up and wearing glasses, but her example demonstrates that it doesn’t always help. And I’ve seen feminism fragment so badly and so viciously over the past year and a half that I have zero confidence that it wouldn’t turn into a “that skinny bitch belogs in a burqa” style vengeance against women who happen to look good. I have no more confidence in the concept of sisterhood anymore.
Professional clothing is professional clothing, no matter who the woman is. No fuck-me pumps, no tight sirts, no short skirts, no layering your makeup on with a trowel, no plunging necklines. It’s all just a bad idea.
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