Should women abide by a high heels dress code?
After a temporary receptionist is sent home for insisting on wearing flat shoes at work, two writers take very different views…
OYES
H LORD, here we go again. Irate woman decides to make a stance against perceived sexism, launches a petition to have the whole thing debated in Parliament and starts talking about “expressing my gender at work” and all over what? A pair of flipping high heels.
Nicola Thorp has adopted the self-righteous expression of a woman whom it pains to confront the terrible truth (you know the one – looks like a camel suffering from constipation) but the fact of the matter is that if she was prepared to accept her employer’s shilling, then it has every right to expect that she plays by its rules.
La Thorp was going for a front-of-house job, that of receptionist at top City accountant Price-water-house-Coopers, where she was going to be exposed to the clients, and if the company that employs her wants her to look a certain way then that is up to it.
It is absolutely absurd to play the sexism card on this one: I’m betting Portico – the agency that hired her – probably expects its male employees to wear ties and no one’s screaming sexism there. But Nicola has reached for the currently fashionable gender card: “Legally, the only way I can defend my right to wear flat shoes at work is if I want to identify as male,” she bleated. Pass the sick bag, Alice.
Nicola is a jobbing actress, accustomed to donning a costume for a role, and so she of all people must understand that the way you dress is the way you define yourself and that certain jobs require a certain uniform. If you are a nurse or a policewoman you must dress in a particular way and if you don’t want to then look for employment elsewhere. The same goes for being a meeter and greeter in a top City firm.
There is no “right” not to wear high heels or otherwise and if a chap had turned up for the same role dressed in a torn T-shirt the better to display his tattoos, I’m betting that he, too, would have got pretty short shrift. WHAT is particularly absurd is that the heels Ms Thorp was being asked to wear were not even that high. Portico wasn’t trying to force her into “stripper” shoes (as Helen Mirren once memorably termed her own stilettos): it said a two-inch height was fine. Show me a woman who can’t walk in two-inch heels for any reason other than genuine injury and I’ll show you a fraud.
So many people of both genders these days think it is fine to go around looking an absolute fright: thank goodness there are still some firms that demand standards. And as for Nicola complaining that it is sexist to say that heels are more feminine, here’s the thing: companies do tend to employ attractive women on their reception desks because they are the first people the visitor sees on coming into the building and it makes a good impression.
Not that they would say so publicly, of course, because to do so would be to invite more howls of outrage from those who make it their business to be outraged.
And if Nicola was offered a really meaty role that involved wearing very high heels 24/7 as Robin Wright does in House Of Cards, do you really think she’d turn it down? Dream on.