‘You are never going to get promoted if you keep dressing like that.’ I was told in my first job by my manager (also a woman). How did I dress like? (I am sure your imagination went wild here already, picturing me in a dino costume or something of the kind.) I have always been a geeky kid, with very little sense of fashion. So my wardrobe would be probably quite weirdly composed, with not-so-much-matching colors clashed together. I also did not have much sentiment towards the brands, so I did not care if my clothes came from high street or second hand store (which they often did). So, to sum up: I did not have skills or interest to dress ‘well’ and I would never make it as a fashion blogger. But I was not aspiring for it. I was working in the office, where I assumed other skills would count more than the fashion sense. However very early in my career I heard that this could make me an ill-fitted material for a manager in the corporate world.
What was even more puzzling is when I discovered that even if I am held to high fashion standards, my male colleagues were not.
One time, I was sent with my male colleague to a local university to give a speech about graduate programs and career path in the company, for which I was working at the time. Afterwards we were debriefing over a coffee and giving each other feedback. ‘I have to tell you one thing, Ula.’ He started, laughing. ‘It does not matter what you said. The only thing the students around me talked was how your shoes do not match your tights.’ OK, my shoes were pink, my tights were blue. I may have looked like a smurfette going for the first day of spring festival. But, to be honest, my colleague had a funny Snoopy T-shirt and road pants (what a couple were we) and I heard not a single whisper about it from surrounding audience.
Don’t get me wrong. Every work place has a dress code and signing up to the organization we are also agreeing we will play by the rules of the place. Creative agency or a start up has a different dress code than a bank. However, what became clear to me very early in my career is that, even within those corporate rules, women will be judged differently than men.
Over the years I have watched a parade of men in ill-fitted outfits and I have never heard any colleague telling me this has been a talking point in their yearly performance review. But I have not met yet a woman who has not had some kind of a challenge with dress code at work and on many instances this has impacted their formal evaluation for being qualified to do the job or not. And this is where the real problem is. I understand that gossip is inevitable part of office life, but the moment your personal style (or lack of it) becomes part of your professional skills evaluation, we are not talking ‘harmless corridor talk’ anymore.
Women told me they were described as non-professional if you dress feminine or fashionable. If they dressed more plain, they risk getting a comment about not being ‘representative‘ enough, being described as ‘dull‘ or even ‘sloppy‘. This is probably he category into which a woman would fall if she tried to pull Steve Jobs and wear black turtle necks every day to work. Imagine that. Women are told their look was ‘too ethnic‘. They are told they seem to be over-paid since they carry expensive accessories.
Fun fact: those comments have come from both men and women in organizations around them. Fun fact number two. I often would have such thoughts myself, since this is the way I have been conditioned. I would see a woman going on a stage to present and, in my mind, I would absolutely rate her outfit. The first step to address the bias is to move it from your unconsciousness straight to more aware part of the brain, reflect on it and call yourself on it when it happens next time. So before launching a saint war on people around you, reflect first on yourself and try to work on this bias, that each and every one of us can have.
Only the next step is to spread the awareness around. So every time I would hear people trying to put professional judgment or evaluate person’s performance based on their looks, I would bring the conversation back on the right track. What works for me is humor. Saying something like ‘yes, I am sure if her shoes could talk they would definitely make a valid point during the meeting, but since they can’t let’s maybe focus on what was really important there.’ It does not call tension but at the same time sends a clear message that I want to keep it professional.
The way we dress is part of our personality. So if we talk diversity we should be able to accept that every individual will have a different take on it. For some it is a meaningful part of their life (love to hear my teams’ stories of people shoes collection, I really admire the skills people have in styling, of which I am so deprived), some treat it more utilitarian. Some like to spend time browsing for new clothes and looking for new ideas, some prefer to do other stuff than shopping. Nothing wrong with either. But let’s not let it turn into a metric in the performance review or professional evaluation. Call out your bias and address it today.