I’m Too Sexy For The Bank
link Debrahlee Lorenzana sues Citibank saying she was fired from Citibank for being too hot – NYPOST.com.
In the interest of maintaining a fair and balanced society, if we allow Miss Lorenzana to be dismissed for being too hot, should we also then be allowed to fire people for being too unsightly? If that were to happen, I can think of at least three daytime and one evening talk show that would immediately cease to exist. Given that possibility, Miss Lorenzana’s sacrifice may be well worth it for the rest of us.
For decades, we’ve been urged to look beyond the surface aesthetics of people to view their inner qualities. For the most part, these sentiments are sound. This allows society to filter out the vapid and the vain from serious consideration as partners, spouses, employees or other important life role players.
But this recent event is a signal that this pendulum has swung too far in one direction and political correctness has been grossly hijacked . It’s one thing to tolerate unsightliness, it’s another to ban pleasantness. Like much of what has happened to society, the well intentioned strive for equality has created inequality in the opposite direction. This of course, is unsustainable. Sure we may pretend to treat people all the same, but seriously, would you rather watch Melissa Theuriau read the news or watch Rosie O’ Donnell? Most would agree Ms. Theriau in a burlap dress and a moustache hands down, doubly so if you factor in sound. Maybe companies can consider what the Chinese communists did for years, mandate that everyone dress in the drab grey Mao suits so representative of uniformity and compliance. Are people actually trying to reduce the workplace environment to essentially an ant colony?
People are drawn to pleasant things, whether they be sounds, tastes, experiences and most definitely, sights. If this were not the case, we’d all be moles. In the case of Miss Lorenzana, it’s clear that attire alone was not the determinant in the ousting from her job since other women were similarly dressed:
“…But her supervisors shot back that those women didn’t have to worry about turning them on “as their general unattractiveness rendered moot their sartorial choices, unlike plaintiff,” the papers say…”
Boy does that sound like an advertisement for an attractive workplace or what? Can you imagine an advert for a job at this place?
“Office staff needed at busy downtown bank. Good pay and working conditions. Must be generally unattractive. Apply with resume, picture must be enclosed.”
Looks to me like the wives are upset. My bet is that some daring company will hire Miss Lorenzana and take the chance that people will enjoy working with her. But that’s just a guess.
I read both your article and the one in The Consumerist about this incident. From what was said in The Consumerist, it doesn’t seem like she was fired for being “too attractive”; it seems like the managers were just arbitrarily trying to give her a hard time.
“[Her two managers] started making offhanded comments about her appearance, she says. She was told not to wear fitted business suits. She should wear makeup because she looked sickly without it. (She had purposefully stopped wearing makeup in hopes of attracting less attention.) Once, she recalls, she came in to work without having blow-dried her hair straight—it is naturally curly—and [a manager] told a female colleague to pass on a message that she shouldn’t come into work without straightening it.
I can understand about some outfits being inappropriate for work, since there are many that I’ve seen women wear that are more like party wear than work wear. But to be told to wear make-up and to straighten one’s hair? This is a job at a bank, not a modeling firm or acting job, where your role IS to look good.
The article goes on to say: “Last June, the plaintiff got a letter notifying her that she’d been put on a 6-month probation and was facing possible dismissal. Part of the reasoning in the note was that she had supposedly arrived late to work on June 6 and 7. The only problem is — those were a Saturday and Sunday and the branch had been closed.”
Seems kind of suspicious to me. If the issue was only her supposedly inappropriate work wear, then why the need to lie? It’s not clear whether Ms. Lorenzana liked her job before all this nonsense started, but I hope she gets a better one after this.