What not to wear

Yesterday, I was once again forced to come out of my mono-manic cave, (read, write, analyze, talk about theories in a very confusing manner), and teach another way too practical workshop to my internship class. Honestly, I'm really still not sure why I, of all the professors around here, got stuck with the interns this semester. Of all the faculty in our department, I am seriously the only one whose experience is limited to academia. The guy across the hallway used to do something cool with film production until he got bitten by the PhD bug, and started teaching. The guy next to him, used to work for a newspaper before he too felt the desperate need to spend the rest of his life in school. My neighbor has all sorts of practical experience running radio and television stations. Yet when the internship class was without an instructor, whom did they assign it to? That's right: me. The person who is so academic that all of her part-time jobs as an undergraduate (with the exception of my famous tenure at the local McDonald's) were on campus too.

But you know, I'm not one to complain. Well, I am, but that's not the point. If you ask me to do something, I'll say yes, and figure it out later. So when they asked me to supervise the interns, I said yes, and started looking at previous years' syllabi. And I quickly figured out that the internship class receives a practical workshop each week; an hour-long class that focuses on the practicalities of finding (and keeping) a job. Now although I've spent my whole little life so far in academics, this does not mean I that a) I haven't switched jobs, and b) I have not tried to venture down other paths. So I quickly decided that this was not going to be too hard to do. That's what I thought anyway.

So yesterday I thought I would use my experience coupled with advice taken from handbooks to introduce the concept of the "job interview" to my students. They will be conducting mock interviews next week, and this week I talked to them about what questions to expect, how to prepare, how to deal with some of the questions, how to research a company prior to a job interview, and how to dress. And that's really what I wanted to talk about today: interview attire. Sorry it took me so long to get there.

Let me just come out here and tell you that I am conservative dresser. Sure, occassionally I'll go nuts and wear a skirt and boots (oh my!), but that's really about it. I don't like wearing see-through shirts, low-cut tops, or super-short skirts, and I don't really think that flaunting what you got is the best way to ace a job interview. Now I realize that perhaps I'm a little biased in that respect, but you know, until yesterday, I couldn't really imagine anyone disagreeing with me. As I was expanding on the importance of a clean and neat appearance, a student raised her hand, and the following conversation ensued (pardon me for the literal transcription, but this was just so odd, I can't even begin to summarize it):

Student: You know, I disagree with that.
Me: With what
Student: With the whole dressing conservatively thing, not showing your cleavage, or your booty, or accentuating your good points. I mean, it's worked for me, so what's the problem?
Me: Well, because you should get your job based on your merits, your achievements, not what you look like
Student: So what if you do?
Me: Well, you don't want to lead people on, giving them the wrong impression about your intentions
Student: So who cares if they think I'm going to sleep my way to the top? As long as I get hired, I'll show them the real me the next day
Me: Yes, and then you'll get fired the next day when your boss finds out you won't actually put out
Other student: Or groped
Student: No
Me: Yes! You need to get hired on what you can do, not on what you look like! Plus, what if there's women on the hiring committee? You know you're just going to turn them off..
Student: Look, Dr. R, with all due respect, you're not from the south, but that's just how things work down here. If you're a girl, and you want a job, you need to look cute. You need to work it, you know. That's just how things are down here in the south, people think it's OK, it's normal
Me: Yeah well, fifty years ago, people down here used to also think segregation was OK and normal, yet we changed our mind about that now, didn't we?

Let me tell you, after that conversation, I felt like my grandmother. Or worse, a sunday school teacher. Am I so out of touch that I don't realize it's normal to "flaunt your stuff" now to get a job? I like to think I'm not. But that leaves the scary question of what happened to girl power and the notion that you should get a job because you're good at what you do.

Our students do dress provocatively. They will wear dresses that are so little, that I won't know where to look when I'm talking to them. They will show cleavage down to their belly button, wear shorts that show their underwear, and don those Victoria Secret sweatpants that say "Pink!" on their behinds. I always figured that was just a college phase. Just like when I was in college, everyone was either wearing turned-up collars or flanel shirts. But maybe they think that that is normal attire. I don't know. But I worry for them.