In my email today: 'Glamour' Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate "Don't"



'Glamour' Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate "Don't"

glamourcover081407.jpgThe latest issue of Glamour advises readers use Kimble leave-in conditioner followed by a flat iron followed by a curling iron followed by spritzer and augmented with hair extensions to achieve "Mary J. Blige's loose beautiful curls." Um, how about time better spent solving the mortgage crisis? Well, a recent slide show by an unidentified Glamour editor on the "Dos and Don'ts of Corporate Fashion" at a New York law firm shed some light on the topic, according to this month's American Lawyer magazine.

First slide up: an African American woman sporting an Afro. A real no-no, announced the 'Glamour' editor to the 40 or so lawyers in the room. As for dreadlocks: How truly dreadful! The style maven said it was 'shocking' that some people still think it 'appropriate' to wear those hairstyles at the office. 'No offense,' she sniffed, but those 'political' hairstyles really have to go.

Um, hey, 'no offense' taken -- my hair has been totally apolitical ever since I learned about the dangers of "Republican highlights" -- but next time you tell a group of professionals they'll need to submit to extensive regular treatments if they expect to survive in the corporate world, maybe try a crowd that isn't so familiar with, like, the law?

The story ends happily, with the law firm Cleary Gottlieb's managing partner Mark Walker, who wasn't at the lady luncheon, sending everyone an email pointing out the stupidty of the Glamour editor and of fashion magazines and yeah pretty much all the things we here at Jezebel hold so near and reviled.

As for the identity of the editor, neither Cleary Gottlieb nor Condé Nast Publications Inc. (publisher of 'Glamour') would say. Indeed, almost all of the half-dozen 'Glamour' editors contacted for this story professed not to have ever set foot in a law firm. 'Cleary what?' asked several. And Walker says he has no idea whether the editor who sparked all this controversy is a well-known fashionista. Not that Walker would know, even if Anna Wintour herself crossed his path. 'Who is she?' Walker asks. 'I really don't know people in the fashion industry.'
Ah, to be a white man.


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Comments

Anonymous said…
This "Glamour" editor clearly doesn't know what she is talking about. I have had sisterlocks for the past 6 years and have ever had a problem. Like any other kind of hair treatment (I call them my "perm") and Hair style it's how you take care of it.

-Professional sisterlock lover
12:24 PM
Anonymous said…
I'm a corporate brother with locks with a decent job in a fortune five company, and not only have they gotten in the way, they have likely propelled my career. They have made me the guy who is confident enough to say the right thing, give the different idea, and bring the creative solution among the typical crowd of blue-shirted/khaki-panted dudes who work in corporate America.

Funny to still here this stuff, but didn't the folks at hamton university have issues w/ "unusual" hairstyles and their perceived view by corporate america; the same corporate america we expect to be more diverse and more accepting of diversity?

Makes you say hmmm.
6:23 PM
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