As reported in Legal Week’s soon to be pen-pal The American Lawyer, partners at Manhattan royalty Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton recently invited an editor from Glamour magazine over to discuss the dos and don’ts of ‘corporate fashion’ (if that’s not too much of an oxymoron).
The event turned into something of a PR disaster, however, when the senior hack advised lawyers against sporting what she termed ‘political’ hairstyles such as dreadlocks and the funktastic classic afro.
In the Square Mile, fortunately, the rules are more straightforward. If you are going bald, cultivate more hair on your face than there is on your head (you too, ladies). The more senior you become in a firm, the higher the waistband on your suit trousers. And the spinning bow-tie, of course, is a certain harbinger of the downward spiral into permanent academia.
How dare some editor tell an entire race of people to NOT wear what NATURALLY comes out of their head??
That's preposterous! It's just like telling a horse to look more like a goat, just to fit in to the business world.
The minute a corporation decides not to hire me because I choose not to DAMAGE my natural hair and appearance, is the minute i know i've made the right decision. Clearly those who make such discriminatory remarks are companies that have issues that need to be dealt with. I, for one, prefer not to work for a company that chooses to focus more on my hair than my intelligence!
And you can believe that because of Glamour's mistakes, they have just lost another subscriber! ME.
for more outraged women of color and our comments- see here:http://concreteloop.com/2007/08/glamour-magazine-editor-ignites-debate#more-16665
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