Blog #3

Within the text of The Beauty Myth, which we are reading in our class, Naomi Wolf traces the plight of the working woman here in America and abroad. First she describes the struggle to manage the working world and the house-care world. She even points out that Western women only do housework six hours less than Middle Eastern women. Wolf also explains the massive amounts of money it would take to pay housewives if they were in fact paid, and yet in the regular workforce, hit the glass ceiling everyday with what they are paid. Wolf then goes on to explain the issues regarding how women should dress and behave by describing the professional beauty qualification and its function in the sex discrimination policies. Wolf explains that this qualification is not only vague, but is very open to interpretation, hence all the lawsuits behind the way women are hired and dress (either more feminine or more masculine). These policies aid in the sex discrimination so far that women almost do not know how to dress for work, because every option available to women in clothes has been the subject of a lawsuit that has failed the woman in question. All of this to say that women face much more obstacles than just being genetically different, they face the glass ceiling and the inability to wear anything and yet to have to wear something. How are women supposed to finagle their way around the working world?
This issue of how to dress come into sharp conflict with the social construction that we have placed on women. According to most people, women should be feminine, medium height (or at least not taller than guys), have long flowing hair, and wear they perfect amount of make-up to where they look "naturally" beautiful. Also, women should then reflect their outward appearance and behave more gently and submissive, despite whatever else is going in their lives. This social construct of women tells them they can only look one way and behave one way as a woman to be accepted. This is the opposite of the truth. A woman can be beautiful at any size with any height or weight, and any hair type and color. A woman can also behave anyway she wants (but with the same stipulation that I would put on men, they they behave morally and kind) and they are beautiful in my book.
This chapter in the book on the workforce most shocked me in the lawsuits regarding their clothing. I never knew that women had such trouble regarding the way they dressed. Also, other than jobs like working at the playboy mansion or in a restaurant like Hooters, I never knew that women were being judged by their youth "beauty" alone regardless of who they are as a person and the quality of work they do. I had heard of discrimination against women and I had even heard of some women being assaulted in their jobs, but never the discrimination to their age or their clothes. I asked it above already but I will ask it again, how are women supposed to manage with these extra pressures placed on them?
These ideas of how women should behave and look can not only affect their perception of themselves and their own worth, but it can go so far as to prevent them from trying. They may just give up on that promotion or that new job, because they think that a more "capable" man or a more "beautiful" woman will come along to fill that position. It also helps contribute to the glass ceiling and even reinforces it. It can also affect the way employers view the women that work for them, expecting them to behave submissive and dress certain ways.
Women are constantly being forced into a very small box and are expected to pop out and look like the perfect woman and employee. The only problem here, and its a big problem, is that no woman is like another. Each one is unique and beautiful in her own way. The sooner everyone, men and women alike, figure that out the sooner the glass will break and success in work and in women's opinion of themselves will grow and break through all other boundaries.