The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf Read Free Book Online

new diet, or buying expensive new clothes, or scheduling an eyelift. Consciously or not, though, she probably reacted; the profession of “image consultant” grew eightfold over the decade. Women and work and “beauty” outside the sex professions fused on the day Craft lost her case, and a wider cycle of diseases was initiated. It will not, the woman might have told herself, happen to me.
     
The Law Upholds the Beauty Backlash
    It could and did continue to happen to working women as the law bolstered employers with a series of Byzantine rulings that ensured that the PBQ grew ever more resilient as a tool of discrimination. The law developed a tangle of inconsistencies in which women were paralyzed: While one ruling,
Miller
v.
Bank of America
, confused sexual attraction with sexual harassment and heldthat the law has no part to play in employment disputes that centered on it (“attractiveness,” the court decided, being a “natural sex phenomenon” which “plays at least a subtle part in most personnel decisions,” and, as such, the court shouldn’t delve into “such matters”), the court in another case,
Barnes
v.
Costle
, concluded that if a woman’s unique physical characteristics—red hair, say, or large breasts—were the reasons given by her employer for sexual harassment, then her personal appearance was the issue and not her gender, in which case she could not expect protection under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. With these rulings a woman’s beauty became at once her job and her fault.
    United States law developed to protect the interests of the power structure by setting up a legal maze in which the beauty myth blocks each path so that no woman can “look right” and win. St. Cross lost her job because she was too “old” and too “ugly”; Craft lost hers because she was too “old,” too “ugly,” “unfeminine,” and didn’t dress right. This means, a woman might think, that the law will treat her fairly in employment disputes if only she does her part, looks pretty, and dresses femininely.
    She would be dangerously wrong, though. Let’s look at an American working woman standing in front of her wardrobe, and imagine the disembodied voice of legal counsel advising her on each choice as she takes it out on its hanger.
    “Feminine, then,” she asks, “in reaction to the Craft decision?”
    “You’d be asking for it. In 1986, Mechelle Vinson filed a sex discrimination case in the District of Columbia against her employer, the Meritor Savings Bank, on the grounds that her boss had sexually harassed her, subjecting her to fondling, exposure, and rape. Vinson was young and ‘beautiful’ and carefully dressed. The district court ruled that her appearance counted against her: Testimony about her ‘provocative’ dress could be heard to decide whether her harassment was ‘welcome.’”
    “Did she dress provocatively?”
    “As her counsel put it in exasperation, ‘Mechelle Vinson wore
clothes
.’ Her beauty in her clothes was admitted as evidence to prove that she welcomed rape from her employer.”
    “Well, feminine, but not too feminine, then.”
    “Careful: In
Hopkins
v.
Price-Waterhouse
, Ms. Hopkins was denied a partnership because she needed to learn to ‘walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely,’ and ‘wear makeup.’”
    “Maybe she didn’t deserve a partnership?”
    “She brought in the most business of any employee.”
    “Hmm. Well, maybe a little more feminine.”
    “Not so fast. Policewoman Nancy Fahdl was fired because she looked ‘too much like a lady.’”
    “All right, less feminine. I’ve wiped off my blusher.”
    “You can lose your job if you don’t wear makeup. See
Tamini
v.
Howard Johnson Company, Inc
.”
    “How about this, then, sort of . . . womanly?”
    “Sorry. You can lose your job if you dress like a woman. In
Andre
v.
Bendix Corporation,
it was ruled ‘inappropriate for a supervisor’ of women