sexism is not dead (duh). it just looks like lookism now.

here's an article from the new york times (which i posted but failed to publish yesterday, apologies if it's no longer up in the same format) about a suit filed by a former l'oreal sales exec in which she accuses a male higher-up (and eventually much of the corporate hierarchy) of conspiring to make her look bad, then eventually wrongfully dismissing her. she had refused to fire a (top-selling) sales associate whom her male boss had deemed not attractive enough. i believe the actual quotation was "get me somebody hot."

there's a decent precedent out there that says that people and organizations can hire and fire on the basis of attractiveness when that attractiveness matters (e.g., when the employee at issue is a model or a film actor). however: the employee at issue here was one of the top-grossing salespeople in the region, and the exec fired for not dismissing her was an award-winning employee as well. l'oreal continues to contest the case despite stipulating to the female exec's story. what the hell!?!

relatedly, you may remember my reference to the (u.s.) representative who visited my american political system seminar a couple of weeks ago. yesterday, studying up for the aps honors exam, i finally heard the story of what happened when i took my one and only bathroom break of the evening, in the middle of a sequence of effective republican attack ads. i missed one ad; it happened to be the one whose lead-in line was a mocking, "heeeere's martha!" i could hear the circusy music from the hallway. what i didn't realize was that the ad was explicitly intended to humiliate the democratic candidate on the basis of her weight. apparently it showed her bounding down steps in an unflattering manner; one of my classmates told me the background music "sounded like bouncing, in time to her steps."

the comment from the republican rep, recounted by one of my study pals was "the women's groups really freaked out, but the ad was effective, so we kept it." which i suppose is what the l'oreal company is hoping for as well...if the only people freaking out are (crazy) (radical) feminists, they can basically do whatever they like. the more disturbing part of this story is that the nationally known politician making this statement had absolutely no sense that there was anything wrong with the tactic his ad people had chosen in this ad. none. it was business as usual for him (although, he was also fairly impassive on the fact that politics was "a rich man's game now" -- so perhaps i shouldn't be too surprised).

this is the sort of thing that makes me wonder if i'll ever succeed in politics. if i'll ever get into politics, for that matter. i can't stomach the thought that for women candidates, as for women execs and women salespeople and women everywhere, appearance remains a weapon to be wielded against you, often to great effect. appearance remains one of sexism's last incurable holdouts, one of the last instances in which it somehow seems ok to differentially evaluate women and men. i suppose it makes sense: women and men usually look different. no changing that. the question, then, is why the standards applied to women are so incredibly, insanely well-enforced while those applied to men are so easily dealt with. (have hair. cut it short. wear dark suit. done.)