Here we go again. Women boiled down to the lowest common denominator - fashion, clothes, the way they look.
Last time I looked The Apprentice was - albeit vaguely - business related, however, today our favourite right-wing rag has published an interesting article pointing out how wrong I was. It is about DRESSING RIGHT! Of course, silly old me. “While the male contestants in the programme look smart, co-ordinated and classy (bar the odd over-wide lapel and loud shirt), the women all look like…well, like what they are, which is unimaginative, hopelessly deluded and over-ambitious sales reps” says the obviously in-the-know Liz Jones. No mention of whether the men are good at business, because, we can assume, they are good at dressing. Or because they are men? In which case they must be good at business.
This is the thing with capitalism, it undermines. It doesn’t necessarily say ‘you’re crap at business go home and breast-feed a baby’ it simply makes a business out of being feminine. Men won’t take you seriously if you’re too slutty, too prim, too lesbiany, too under-styled, too fat or too powerful. Could the very fact that business men sort of have to wear suits and shirts and ties, according to “normal” practice by helping out the male contestants wardrobe choice? Not too much to go wrong there, is there? Heaven forbid any of them should turn up to work in jewellery that is clunky!
Luckily Ms Jones has a solution too all the female Apprentice-wannabes plights - the good feminine choice of clothes we all need to be successful women in the world of work.
She goes through a list of rather expensive items - £200 label jackets, £1,200 label dresses. And expects us to have plenty of staples, such as white shirts. £25 f**king quid on a WHITE SHIRT? And she thinks that’s cheap. The most expensive item of clothing I’ve ever brought was £90, and that was my wedding dress. OK, so I am not a clothes horsey type of person, we knew that; I try to wear clothes that look OK or that - radically - I like. That includes work, because, really, when I am at work I am using my mind - which works just fine with out a floaty shirt-dress from Prada, thanks very much. Ms Jones asserts that she wouldn’t hire a woman that wore to much make-up etc, because she might spend too much time on her lunch hour in the beauty salon - excuse me but it is HER LUNCH HOUR, surely? Nor, she claims, would she hire an unkempt woman because she would assume her work would “also be sloppy” - of course, that equates perfectly. Funny how I managed at once to be both badly dressed AND get a First Class degree, isn’t it? Fluke, probably, a day-off from the sloppiness my dress suggests.
So, there you go. Women are to be looked at, men just get on with it. I am a woman, by biological chance and I liek my clothes for what they are, things to keep my warm and look a bit nice. I like my job better.
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