Glamour Magazine Has it Both Ways in their Sexist Article on How Powerful Women Dress
Executive Summary
- Glamour magazine communicates to women who to leverage their sexuality to gain professional advantage.
- According to Glamour, “shaking that MoneyMaker” to funders of cancer research dollars.
- Glamour’s mixed messages send a ridiculous message, that requires coded language.
Glamour magazine, enforcing double standards and hypocrisy, and lowering the intelligence of women everywhere.
Introduction
The article in question is Power & Glamour in the March edition of British Vogue. This article was brought to my attention because it was sent to me as the sender knew someone profiled in the article. This article is humiliating to women without knowing it. It showcases some powerful women and describes how they dress. It must be filed under the category of how to write an article without really trying.
It essentially profiles different women and then asks how they dress, it then makes a value judgment about this which is something positive, and then moves on to another woman and so on. It seems to be designed to sell more clothes with comments like:
“Its perfectly acceptable to be a high performer and to care about your appearance, Women no longer have to camouflage themselves by dressing in a traditional male way — having a a sense of fashion doesn’t mean you are shallow.”
I think simply being a regular reader of Glamour would already indicate that you are shallow, and I also don’t think this is particularly controversial. Just the ads would tell you that. However, its important for the magazine to continually tell their readers that they are not shallow.
Is this ad shallow? Not according to Glamour Magazine.
Also, this just in, YachtWorld Magazine does not think the yacht below is in any way greedy or over the top, and wonders why anyone would say such a thing.
Neither of the two ads you just saw was shallow!
At one point the article focuses on Dr. Janine Erler, a cancer researcher. Here quote is as follows:
“For many of us promoting your work to a further audience, networking, especially in the evening is where the stakes get much higher, and women can really trounce men.” Dr. Janine Erler is a highly regarded scientist, who leads a team of eight…in the department of cell and molecular biology at the Institute of Cancer Research. Her work around enzymes is considered globally important and involves a constant stream of scientific breakthroughs, but they require constant fundraising. Erler doesn’t have to try to hard – 5ft 10in with long legs, she cuts a statuesque figure in a lab coat or an evening dress. Last year at a fundraising event for the Royal Marsden Hospital at the Saatchi Gallery, Erler took care to raise the game, enviously beautiful in a floorlength black halterneck dress by Anoushka G. “I like to look very polished for evening events, which are extremely important for our fundraising. But I don’t wear anything too revealing because its still work.” – Glamour
Reviewing the Real Backstory
So let us analyze the backstory to this quote for a moment. First, who is saying that her team is creating “constant scientific breakthroughs.” Is this Janine Erler or was this statement made by other people who are well known in the field? It appears most likely that it was simply said by Janine Erler herself because if it were true, the second sentence “requires constant fundraising” would not make any sense. Research groups that are creating constant scientific breakthroughs do not have to put on sexy dresses to raise money; money seeks them out because of the likelihood of commercializing the breakthrough.
So if Glamour’s only validation of the success of the different women in this article is the interviewees’ statements about their work that is a problem. This goes equally for the woman who is profiled in the article who works for a hedge fund and has 40 billion pounds under management. Did anyone but her validate this?
Shaking Your MoneyMaker for Cancer Research Dollars
So loosely translated Janine is tall and sexy and shows off her breasts at the Saatchi Gallery to raise money for her cancer research.
Is that what Glamour is praising?
It is nice to know that physical appearance and flirting is helping channel cancer research funding. Yes, I feel a lot better now. Lets review. Men give her money or partially give her money because she….
“raises the game?”
But what game are we talking about here?
Because it sounds like the physical attractiveness game, I am not hearing anything about Janine raising her mental game at these fundraisers. She is not discussing the books she reads in different areas to be able to converse well at these events. This must be some from of women on women sexism going on.
It is the use of language to obscure rather than to clarify.
Glamour’s Mixed Messages
I really can’t recall so many mixed messages in anything I have read. This quote is very telling, which is supposed to describe some trend in women’s dress.
“They are not dressing for comfort, the higher up the ladder they get more freedom they have to exploit their femininity.” – Glamour
What does that mean? What is exploiting femininity? I have never heard that phrase before. I have heard of using sexuality but not using femininity. This seems to be a euphemism. So the higher up women go in their careers, the more sexually women dress? Thus according to the Glamour rule, boardrooms are filled with women dressed super sexy?
Well, no wonder so many bad decisions are being made by male executives, they can’t see or think straight because the female executives are dressing like streetwalkers and bending over the copy machine! At least I now know who to blame it on.
This article is embarrassing to Dr. Erler and shows her as conniving by using her appearance to raise money. I am expecting a line to say…
“All the men at the fundraiser have no idea she wears a silk teddy and Frederick’s of Hollywood edible underpants under her Anoushka G dress.
Dr. Erler also carries a vibrator in her purse, but never whips it out, because you know, its still work.”
Conclusion
In some strange way, this article qualifies as propaganda. It is sending mixed messages and contradicting itself in many areas. The magazine seems to be saying two divergent things.
- One that women should be taken seriously, but….
- That dressing up with a stress on sexuality can help advanced a woman’s career, and furthermore that not doing so is “dressing up like a man.” This would fall into the logical fallacy of a false dichotomy. That is either a dress with a deep slit on one side or a pair of overalls from Hee Ha. Surely, there must be something in-between that can be found.
How can the author and editor not see the inherent inconsistency between these two arguments?
The portion of the article that covers Dr.Erler is extremely concerning because it implies that cancer research funding is somehow related to the physical appearance and fashion choices of researchers that are flirting with men that hold the purse strings in after hour events. If this is true, it should certainly stop, because there may be better researchers than Dr. Erler who are not 5ft 10 inches, who both have short legs and a poor fashion sense, but could put the money to better use because they have better ideas and more knowledge.
It also leads me to question whether she is actually the brains behind the research or more of the front person.
What is also interesting is how little the women who are profiled in the article are covered with respect to what got them where they are in the first place. Also, will this strategy of “exploiting one’s femininity” work for all women? All the women in this piece seem to be youngish looking, attractive and thin. Could Glamour magazine conceive of the idea that there may be women who are talented but are older or less able to fit within their physical profile? According to Glamour should talented but overweight women are dressing sexy as well in order to “raise their game,” or would Glamour recommend something more comfortable, like perhaps a barrel? Glamour seems to think that the way all these women dress has played an enormous role in their success, and this is most likely because people who work for and write for Glamour see the world as some type of perpetual fashion show.
Look at this guy…..is he leveraging his femininity?
The people at Glamour would probably like a return to the good old days, when people really dressed up. There is no doubt that Louis the 14th put a lot of effort into this outfit. Now that was glamour! Can you see how he is raising his game?
Its very difficult to see how if the women profiled in this story, if they actually had the content that they are declared to have, would want to be associated with it. However, the reason is quite obvious, to obtain more publicity to enhance their careers, based on something other than their work.