Normally, I hardly wear any make-up.
During OCI, I wear it every day.
Normally, I live in jeans.
During OCI, I wear a skirt suit every day.
Normally, I strive for comfort over all else.
During OCI, I wear heels and panty hose and skirts.
Why? Well, some part of it is compliance with business formal attire, but some part of it is also wanting to look my best for an interview. I could wear a suit with pants, but experience tells me a skirt is generally going to be more successful. I could wear flats, but heels look better.
On some level, it's just part of the game. It's why we print our resumes on fancy ecru paper, why we smile until our faces fall off, why we carry around the snazzy leather portfolios.
It's worth recognizing, though, that most of my interviewers are male. At some point, does wanting to look nice--which by definition means comporting with traditional definitions of feminine beauty--start to challenge our feminist values?
Then again, is there an argument to be made that change is achieved within a profession, such that slapping on some lipstick today is worth the chance to join a firm and work to address the gender disparities in the future?
I suppose it's also a collective action problem: it would be impossible to get all women at all law schools around the country to agree to reject certain antiquated expectations, particularly since not all women agree on what these may be.
Of course, the old stand-by response is to wear whatever makes you happy because you don't want to work someplace where heels and make-up decide who gets callbacks. That's a bit naive, though--people are regularly judged based on their appearance for all sorts of things, and women more so. Not to mention that you'd never know anyways, unless you risked a few interviews of your own showing up make-up free and in flats--something I don't imagine many of us are interested in testing.
And, frankly, everyone would agree in principle with that platitude, but I have trouble accepting that every single woman at my law school simply prefers hose and heels to the more comfortable options for business formal attire.
So I wonder. Do you?
During OCI, I wear it every day.
Normally, I live in jeans.
During OCI, I wear a skirt suit every day.
Normally, I strive for comfort over all else.
During OCI, I wear heels and panty hose and skirts.
Why? Well, some part of it is compliance with business formal attire, but some part of it is also wanting to look my best for an interview. I could wear a suit with pants, but experience tells me a skirt is generally going to be more successful. I could wear flats, but heels look better.
On some level, it's just part of the game. It's why we print our resumes on fancy ecru paper, why we smile until our faces fall off, why we carry around the snazzy leather portfolios.
It's worth recognizing, though, that most of my interviewers are male. At some point, does wanting to look nice--which by definition means comporting with traditional definitions of feminine beauty--start to challenge our feminist values?
Then again, is there an argument to be made that change is achieved within a profession, such that slapping on some lipstick today is worth the chance to join a firm and work to address the gender disparities in the future?
I suppose it's also a collective action problem: it would be impossible to get all women at all law schools around the country to agree to reject certain antiquated expectations, particularly since not all women agree on what these may be.
Of course, the old stand-by response is to wear whatever makes you happy because you don't want to work someplace where heels and make-up decide who gets callbacks. That's a bit naive, though--people are regularly judged based on their appearance for all sorts of things, and women more so. Not to mention that you'd never know anyways, unless you risked a few interviews of your own showing up make-up free and in flats--something I don't imagine many of us are interested in testing.
And, frankly, everyone would agree in principle with that platitude, but I have trouble accepting that every single woman at my law school simply prefers hose and heels to the more comfortable options for business formal attire.
So I wonder. Do you?
posted by Q at 1:21 PM
2 Comments:
Men wear ties and get their hair cut.
I do wonder, yes.
I don't think I would keep a job just because I wear a nice suit and put on makeup every day.
As long as our confidence is bound up in our appearance, and as long as our job prospects depend on impressions made in the first few minutes of very short interviews, I think pantyhose and makeup manufacturers will be doing good business.
Even so, I noticed plenty of women wearing pant suits and either low heels or flats. One of my friends wore pants to interviews she didn't care so much about, skirts to her first choices. That is still an acknowledgment that even today, a skirt makes a difference.
Perhaps the "traditional definitions of feminine beauty" are broadening. Perhaps the change takes a long, long time.
Several people have commented to me that they can't believe I wear my head scarves to interviews. I subscribe to the (possibly naive, as you say) view that I don't want to work at a firm that can't deal with my scarf. Seriously. I wear it every day, it's pretty important to me. And I think it's a small thing, and it "fits" within what should be professionally acceptable. I'd also rather wear jeans every day, but I realize that a suit is required,and I'm fine with "conforming" to that.
Not sure about the skirt vs pants thing -- I think my hit rate might be better on the pants.
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