At least, that’s what an unidentified Glamour editor told young attorneys (likely summer associates) at Cleary, Gottlieb in New York, according to Jezebel:
Well, a recent slide show by an unidentified Glamour editor on the “Dos and Don’ts of Corporate Fashion” at a New York law firm shed some light on the topic, according to this month’s American Lawyer magazine. [link unavailable, but see also Legal Week]
First slide up: an African American woman sporting an Afro. A real no-no, announced the ‘Glamour’ editor to the 40 or so lawyers in the room. As for dreadlocks: How truly dreadful! The style maven said it was ’shocking’ that some people still think it ‘appropriate’ to wear those hairstyles at the office. ‘No offense,’ she sniffed, but those ‘political’ hairstyles really have to go.
Um, hey, ‘no offense’ taken — my hair has been totally apolitical ever since I learned about the dangers of “Republican highlights” — but next time you tell a group of professionals they’ll need to submit to extensive regular treatments if they expect to survive in the corporate world, maybe try a crowd that isn’t so familiar with, like, the law?
Not to mention, Jesus, how behind the times are you? Even white-shoe firms have been okay with neat dreadlocks and neat Afros for quite some time now. Braids, which were once so! shocking! are old-hat. I mean, would you call this woman unprofessional-looking or political-looking?
Claudia Gordon, the first deaf African-American female attorney in the U.S.
Or this woman?
Tamika Nordstrom, the first African-American woman to make partner at Briggs and Morgan in Minneapolis
I mean, granted, you’re not going to get away with wild, Macy Gray-style hair or a huge 70’s Afro or unkempt dreadlocks. But if you’re inclined to more out-there hairstyles, you’re unlikely to be seeking a job at a place like Cleary, Gottlieb in the first place. You’re more likely to work in a creative field, or, if you’re a lawyer, in a policy, government, public-interest or activism position. God knows I can’t dye my hair pink or pierce my nose or have visible tattoos doing what I do for a living. Don’t want to scare the clients.
What the Glamour editor (unnamed because nobody at Glamour or Cleary, Gottlieb would ‘fess up) missed is that just being a black, female attorney at a major New York law firm is a pretty political act in itself. But it’s not so radical or rare anymore that utter conformity with white standards of beauty is required.
Though it’s not so long ago that black women who were trying to get jobs in corporate law almost uniformly straightened their hair. I mean, I remember that most of the black women at my law school — and there were a good number — were pretty much all straightening their hair.
But then, that was — eep! — a dozen or so years ago. We still had to wear skirts to work (and certainly to court) when we got out. And we weren’t so very far behind the first women to get jobs at big firms and make partner — and a lot of them had to make the choice between career and family, since there was little or no possibility of getting a husband who was willing to do what a corporate wife would to support one’s career. Feminine traits were suppressed and your life became the firm if you wanted to go anywhere — which is one reason I really hated all the speculation about Harriet Miers being a dyke because she wasn’t married at her age. Not that being a dyke is a bad thing, but the automatic assumption that she must be a dyke if she didn’t marry showed a failure to understand the choices that women of her generation had to make to get anywhere in corporate law (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who came up in advocacy and public-interest law, didn’t have to make those same choices).
I suspect that the Glamour editor had no freakin’ idea that law firms are far more accepting places these days than the mainstream fashion world. And if the reason is fear of lawsuits, who cares? Truth is, the more that the partners and the corporate client muckety-mucks see black women performing competently, the more latitude they’ll likely give to hairstyles that don’t require a whole lot of processing.
Of course, not everyone is so accepting, such as Neal Boortz, who said that Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s natural hairstyle made her look “like a ghetto slut.” Interestingly, he said that her prior, braided hairstyle “had some dignity and class.” And yet, 15 years ago, had she shown up in Congress wearing that hairstyle, he would have pulled out the “ghetto slut” line. For the same hairstyle he now says was “classy.”
Well, if it’s white people wearing dreadlocks, I totally agree, and would expand the prohibition to a planetary scale. Except for that guy from the Circle Jerks.
What a disappointment. Glamour was probably the most pro-feminist of the fashion mags that I could tell. Not that it’s saying much.
I have never considered dreadlocks to be unprofessional — I think that the editor is showing her age. I always thought they were very attractive, and never made assumptions about the person’s politics or professionalism because they twisted their hair.
This just reinforces the idea, to me, that these fashion consultants have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. A few years ago, my (large NY) law firm brought in a consultant to talk to the summer associates about appropriate dress. while totally not as offensive as the above “advice”, her main point of concern was about all of the women who showed up in the office in sneakers and flip flops (and then, of course, changed into more professional shoes once in the office). She seemed to think that this was highly inappropriate (even though everyone, up to and including the female partners did this), and that a better solution would be for everyone to change their shoes at the Starbucks across the street before walking into the building.
Yes, because (a) we all carry our nice shoes with us every day instead of leaving them in our desks for convenience and (b) I’m pretty sure that by day 2, the starbucks across the street would bar us from the building if 200 or so women came in solely to take their shoes off at the same time.
Ever notice that these stupid rules always seem to weigh much more heavily on women in general?
OMFG. You could fit what I know about African-American hair in a thimble, and even I’m shocked at the ignorance of that statement. Does she have any freakin’ idea what’s involved in straightening? The time, money, and pain? And does she really want a world full of lawyers spending more time on their hair than their clients?
Wait, don’t answer the last one.
What is this, 1992? Seriously, those are two very conservative hairstyles — even white women don’t wear the helmet-head flip anymore.
That’s just evil. Stupid, too, but evil.
If a firm actually refuses to promote a woman who sports a well-kept “black” hairstyle, I’d say the problem is bigger than can be solved by her changing styles.
I wrote a really long comment that I’ve just deleted because I would say the issue can pretty much be summed up above by what BetaCandy said:
“If a firm actually refuses to promote a woman who sports a well-kept “black” hairstyle, I’d say the problem is bigger than can be solved by her changing styles.”
The only thing I’d change, given my experience as a frizzy-haired curvaceous double-degreed female w/license to practice in two states who has survived some interesting experiences “not being seen” by “managing partners”, is to change the “if” to “when”.
Particularly in times of rising interest rates and subprime messes (e.g., currently), when even the privileged feel their economic stability being threatened (however in denial they may outwardly be about it), that phenomenon (and many that are similar) is far more common than I think even progressives are willing to admit.
” I mean, would you call this woman unprofessional-looking or political-looking?”
Oh, and so, yes, Zuzu, there are people in positions to hire, and people in position to influence those who would hire, who would deem her both. Awards and all. Just because they didn’t really want to hire her.
But somehow I think you already knew that.
Now I realize that this is the beauty culture that we live in, but after reading the story at Jezebel I was freshly struck by it:
Isn’t it weird that women with curly hair are supposed to spend a huge amount of time and money and use harsh chemicals to get it to lie straight, while women with straight hair are supposed to spend a huge amount of time and money and use harsh chemicals to make their hair curly?
I was able to step aside from that and put down the perming rods, but it’s easy for me — I’m white and middle-class. Not many other people in our society have the same option I do.
Meanwhile I’m sitting here going: wtf are Republican highlights?
One is so sheltered, working in advertising.
Perhaps someone can explain to me why, when a black woman who has already demonstrated that she’s capable of getting a JD and passing a bar exam is forced to ape looking as white as possible to GET A FREAKIN JOB, this is not political.
Ladies! Make sure you look as white as you can!
I mean, in what alternate universe is this NOT a political statement itself?
Meanwhile I’m sitting here going: wtf are Republican highlights?
Expensive and blonde.
Janis, there’s a lot of personality-damping in obtaining a corporate law job. The men with long hair in law school cut it off before interview seasons. As I mentioned, skirts were the norm when I got out of law school, and my understanding from Jill is that even though women can wear pants to work now, there’s still pressure at law school to wear skirts to interviews. And, of course, then you have the hose problem — what color hose do you wear? I was steered to taupe hose by a lovely woman at Nordstrom’s when I was stressing in the hosiery department about how to find just the right navy hose to go with my navy suit and my slightly-different-tone navy shoes.
Eventually, I found my way to eggplant for suits. It’s kind of like navy, but it stands out a bit — but not too much. I realized that being one of the navy-suited legions would not help me be memorable, but I didn’t have the academic chops to wear pants back then.
What’s weird is that once you actually start practicing, your wardrobe and hair, as long as it isn’t so obviously DIFFERENT, is very much secondary to your performance. And one thing that I give the Evil Empire props for is that — even if their hiring record isn’t great — once they actually got you in their clutches, your race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. was less important than your ability to just take whatever they dished out. Well, at least in the first few years. But that’s when they started bleeding out associates.
Loretta, you know the women you see in the elevator every day whose hair is a carefully maintained (and dead-straight) shiny concoction of artfully interspersed (and clearly artificial) wheat, honey and sand?
Republican highlights.
Looks like the concept is transferable, though class-based more than explicitly party-political in my home town: “Dalkeith blonde” and “Claremont blonde”. The suburbs are next door to each other, but Dalkeith is generally considered the home of “old money”, and Claremont “new money”. The idea of “Dalkeith blonde” corresponds to your description of Republican highlights; “Claremont blonde” corresponds to a rather less artful and more platinum do.
good lord, this is all so depressing and enraging.
Well, personally I think of them as elevator blondes, but I think that’s what Zuzu meant.
They tend, in my building, to get off at the banking and law floors. The fashionistas (we have magazines in the building too) tend to work the more subtle “I don’t do anything, I just look this way” thing, presumably because northeastern WASP aristocracy prefer it.
i heard about this just recently from shakespeare’s sisters. like i said over at shakespeare’s sisters, this is shocking but not surprising. but that still doesn’t make it ANY less bitter.
If Glamour is a high-fashion magazine and an editor hired by Conde Nast to represent the title says that, then that in itself just highlights the ”closed-door” mentality that big, mainstream companies that towards ethnic minorities and in this case, black people. and I wonder what this editor would say if Naomi Campbell came to a shoot and decided she wanted to rock a gorgeous Afro ? hmm…jury’s out on that one.
i remember once reading a post on the now defunct-miss girl message boards when i was a baby girl in those days. the post was talking about the validity of magazines like ESSENCE. i was so young then, i didn’t have a clue what to say back because i knew i read those magazines being a black girl. even though magazines like ESSENCE have agendas (they barely have natural-headed sisters), they were and are important in a media that still is refusing to show diversity. until this can be obtained, ethnic minority magazines especially beauty/fashion ones will always matter.
what makes this worse 4 me is i even bought US glamour once. i spend most of my time in rainy England and to be honest, british glamour does make a real good effort to include ethnic faces (i remember seeing this black model in a shoot — i was SHOOK. and very pleased to see that).
good post.
Thanks, Aulelia.
What’s interesting to me is that this idea that black women must straighten their hair to be acceptable is very US-centric. My friend from law school, who I mentioned in the post, did a study abroad program in Paris, and was astonished that people pegged her as American instantly. It was because she straightened her hair — at the time, that wasn’t something that black women in France did (of course, a lot of those women are actually from Africa, so there are different issues there).
Which amused me, because when I went to Paris in 1991, I kept getting mistaken for British, even after I’d opened my mouth. Guess the little round tortoiseshell glasses and tweed jacket helped.
i remember once reading a post on the now defunct-miss girl message boards when i was a baby girl in those days. the post was talking about the validity of magazines like ESSENCE.
Okay, I admit I’m pretty clueless about these things, but what’s the beef against ethnic minority magazines? Half the point of a magazine is that it caters to a specific audience. It’s like arguing that because there are plenty of computer magazines out there, the entire hobby field is covered so we don’t need the ones about knitting or photography.
Not to say that being a minority is a hobby, but …. geez.
Sorry- I just graduated from law school two years ago. There were maybe three of us, out of forty-plus black girls in my class, who didn’t straighten their hair. And the other two went into public interest.
I read your post about a Glamour editor’s comments on hairstyles for work, and I’d like to share with you our thoughts. First, we regret the comments were made. The employee (not a beauty editor) spoke to a small group of lawyers at a private luncheon without her supervisor’s knowledge or approval, and her comment — that Afros are not work appropriate — does not represent Glamour’s point of view.
Secondly, immediately upon learning of it, we sought to rectify the situation. The editor has been dealt with in a very serious manner, and the entire staff has been reminded of the magazine’s policies and procedures for making public appearances.
Glamour is proud of its diverse readership and celebrates the beauty of ALL women. We have responded directly and openly with readers to assure them of this fact. We have also apologized to the law firm, and we extend the same apology to you.
Cindi Leive,
Editor-in-Chief of Glamour