Is your appearance affecting your career?
Women at work live in fear of image judgment, writes Helen Croydon
Some years ago, when I worked for a trendy media company, the office often felt more like a catwalk than a workspace as my female colleagues paraded around in their latest fashion purchases and matching accessories. Most of us were fighting for more front-of-camera assignments, and the way to get that, it seemed, was to dress to impress.
Mornings were such a faff – blow-drying hair, comparing four different shoe options and emptying the contents of a tan handbag into a grey one because that matched better. I’d often bump into colleagues in the loo, changing from flats to heels, before we made our grand office entrance.
The blokes, meanwhile, just bounced in, wearing trainers and jeans.
It isn’t only the media world in which we suffer from image anxiety. This week research revealed a third of all women fear that their appearance could hold back their careers. One in 10 has called in sick because they were having a “bad” hair or skin day.
The fear of “imagejudgment” will do little for the position of women in the workplace. This month SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was voted number one on the Woman’s Hour power list. Yet she has stated that more column inches are written about her outfits than her policies.
And while women may be damned for not caring about their appearance, they are also judged if they are deemed too attractive, and are not taken seriously. Angelina Jolie is regularly criticised for “exploiting” her celebrity status instead of being praised for her humanitarian work with the UN. Could it be she is so beautiful we can’t resist a dig? The author Michelle Miller conducted an experiment recently in which she used the profile picture of a model on the dating app Tinder, and then for job applications. She found that women do better when they are a seven out of 10. Too high on the attraction stakes and they are judged as nothing more than eye candy. Too low and they don’t get a look-in.
Barbara, a 36-year-old sales director with stunning looks, made a similar discovery. “After spraining my ankle, I couldn’t wear heels for six months,” she says. “My job is all about being glamorous and entertaining clients at fancy dinners – but because I couldn’t wear heels, I wore low-key outfits. I was surprised at how much it affected my mood. I was more subdued, and my colleagues starting making jokes that I was losing my edge; it was an eye-opener.
“In that instant, I decided I no longer wanted to be judged on my appearance. I stopped dressing up. I felt beautiful on the inside, but I wanted to test if others would see that. The funny thing was, I still got male attention, but I attracted more serious types.”
I can relate. When I switched from long hair to short hair in my thirties, I too noticed a radical change in how I was received. Gone was the “girl” often teased for being a bit ditzy. At work, I felt more authoritative; in social situations, I found women more agreeable. And, like Barbara, I didn’t get less attention from men, just more honourable attention. Problem solved? Not really. Judging how to pitch yourself in a looksbased society is an ongoing minefield, but I’d like to think I’d never call in sick if I felt a bit bloated. Even a 10-out-of-10 girl must have off days, I’d imagine. And maybe the rest of us need to remember that before we call the office about a “stomach bug”, when our only real ailment is a bad hair day.