Rules for Women

First the disclaimer:  The following are my observations and conclusions based upon my life experiences and nothing else. I don’t like them, not one bit.  But this is how I see things right now, at least in America, and they are what women must do in the professional world.  Don’t hate me for it.  End Disclaimer.  

There are some communities and cultures where sexuality is embraced by the females.  When I say embraced, examples include normalized behaviors where little girls start playing with makeup at an early age with the encouragement of their mothers and grandmothers.  Where showing off your midriff and / or  cleavage are accepted from the earliest teen years and continues throughout life.  It happens in all sorts of communities and cultural groups but in my personal experience I’ve seen it most in the latino communities.  I think this is because I grew up in South Florida where we had a huge Cuban community.  It’s not a problem in these communities because, I think, the males become somewhat desensitized to the sexuality of the women from a very early age.  The problem is when a female from one of those communities starts to move into the world of business.  They tend not to be prepared to deal with males who don’t know how to handle their sexuality.   Over the course of my long career I’ve seen this play out a couple of times and I came to the unpleasant conclusion that, at least when it comes to the professional world, there are rules that just apply to women.  

Her name was Malena but everyone called her Molly.  Molly was stunning.  A perfect cherub face framed by luxurious dark hair.  She had dark red lips and an hourglass shape.  The aforementioned lips and her chest were augmented with injections and implants making them more prominent.  She was latino and very proud of her body and wore clothing to accentuate it.  She had a sassy attitude with a foul mouth. She was such a presence that she could easily be on the cover of a magazine or star of a tv show.  She had so much overt sexuality that if virtually every straight male said what went through their head when they first talked with her, it would be a non-stop litany drenched with double meaning innuendo.  Simply stated Molly was a double blasted shotgun of sexual energy.  

Molly was unique in that she was also brilliant and a hard worker in a typically male dominated sector of the manufacturing industry.  It goes without saying that there are many intelligent and hard working women in male dominated industries.  Typically in my experience, they also aren’t poster children for feminine sexuality even when they are forced to wear their safety equipment, let alone when they are in office garb.  I met Molly years ago when I was sent to a training program.  The program was over a year long, and included several in-person sessions throughout the year.  When we were at the face to face training sessions, I often had to work with Molly on projects.  I got along well with her using the standard techniques of middle aged men when dealing with this sort of challenge.  I tried to not think about her sexuality, and when I was talking directly to her I stared at her forehead so my eyes wouldn’t naturally wander to her overtly accentuated cleavage.  Some of the other guys weren’t so disciplined.  Over the course of the program there were two incidents where the head of the program had to get involved.  In both cases it was the guys who were out of line.  One of them always offered to walk Molly to wherever she was going, be it her room at the hotel or her car, at the end of the sessions.  He did it in an attempt to chat her up as he was oblivious to the cues she was giving that she wasn’t interested.  Molly let him continue as she didn’t think he was going to be an issue.  Unfortunately, the intensity of his conversation started to increase.  I can only assume in his mind he felt they had moved on to flirting.   Eventually he started asking for various sexual interactions.  These were the kind of things you’d only ask your partner in a committed relationship.  They continued for days even though she very clearly communicated that she wasn’t interested in him.  Eventually the head of the training program had to get involved and perhaps unsurprisingly Molly’s suitor went from near perfect attendance in our in-person sessions to being absent from most of the rest of them.  

The second incident was similar but without the interaction. One of the other attendees couldn’t stop talking about “how hot she is” when she wasn’t right there in the group.  The rest of his colleagues tried to change the course of the conversation but he was almost obsessed.  Eventually it came to a head when some of the venue staff overheard it and reported it to management.  It became a thing and the obnoxious guy quit the program in anger. 

The problem, in my opinion, was as much because of Molly’s perception as it was with the guys.  Molly was clueless as to the effect all that sexual energy has on men.  When I say clueless, she, and women like her, know that they are attractive, and clearly enjoy the attention.   The problem is that all that sexuality is super challenging for younger men or men who haven’t developed self discipline in their interactions.  Hence, when left to their own devices, they behave extremely inappropriately as I described.   They do this because without mechanisms for self discipline, they are basically responding with the same sexual energy that she is broadcasting.   Thinking about the first guy who continually and graphically asked Molly if he could get physical with her, he was responding to the input he was getting from her.  Sure she was telling him “no, I don’t want you” with her voice.  Her body language including her sassy foul mouthed responses during break times, her perfectly made face, her cleavage and swaying hips in skin tight jeans were all communicating something very different to his undisciplined mind.   Yes, he was absolutely in the wrong.  This doesn’t change that he didn’t have the skills to understand or properly respond to that level of stimulus.  

Let me be absolutely clear.  This sexual and brilliant woman is who Molly is.  It’s her identity and there is nothing wrong with that. In a perfect world, she should be who she wants to be.  She didn’t do anything wrong.  It wasn’t like she was grinding against coworkers.  She was Latino and, as I said, in my experience,  this more overt sexuality is common in the latino subculture where brash personalities, low cut tops and heavy makeup is the norm even in professional positions.  It’s a culture where women pride themselves on their femininity.  Unfortunately sexuality, in our puritan based western world, is clearly a distraction, even to the most professional of men.  We are simply wired that way, or maybe enculturated is a better word. For some, as exemplified by the two wayward males Molly discussed, it’s overpowering and leads to poor choices and behaviors.    

I believe this is why businesses, in most cases, develop employee cultures devoid of sexuality beyond the lightest of feminine and masculine cues.  I say in most cases, because there seems to be an exception for females who are in sales and those who represent the organization as their attractiveness can be a bit more overt.  In these roles there seems to be an unwritten rule that women need to be attractive but not overtly sexual, and of course they need to be very professional.  

This is where the rules come in.  It’s really just one rule.  For most professional women, they need to sedate their appearance as much as possible.  They have to wear the uniform at work, whatever that uniform is, such as an actual uniform, a suit or business casual. Most importantly it can’t be anything suggestive. They need to wear minimal to no makeup.  Simply stated, they need to eliminate their sexual nature.  It’s no secret that virtually all companies would prefer a workforce entirely made of robots if they could.  This has been the trend for the last fifty years and it’s only accelerating with the adoption of Artificial Intelligence.  They want this because the removal of humans means the removal of countless human issues.  Sexuality is one of the biggest components of our humanity so the resulting emotions can create lots of issues. 

But what about people like Molly whose identity is intertwined with their sexuality?  For them, they need to develop two identities.  And yes, I know what I’m saying is horrible, but it doesn’t make it any less true in my experience.  They need one personality for work that is virtually devoid of any and all sexuality.  For their real selves they can go back to their foxy minxy sexy personality during personal time.  The bad part is that the two should never ever ever meet.  Not on social media, not with work friends, and not even at the company Christmas party.  For this tactic to work they’ve got to be virtually bipolar.  

This is brutally difficult for someone who doesn’t see how the effect they have on others is so profound.  They have the mistaken belief fostered by popular culture that they should be able to embrace who they are and what they like in every environment.   They have been told that men should be able to control their innate urges.  Of course reality is that some, if not most,  men will act differently around attractive women without even realizing it.  This goes to the point where those with limited self control will misbehave.  

So how can these women do it?  They have to have complete focus on being a professional.  At work they have to dress the part, act the part and  only ever talk about work stuff even with other women at work.  In Molly’s case, she could have worn baggy jeans on the shop floor, not skin tight jeans. Same with the work top. Her foul mouth and innuendo should have been completely filtered. 

Again, this is challenging because of social norms.  We develop close friendships at work.  So why always keep this barrier? The answer is that it bleeds over into other conversations.  To use the common language: This sucks! It sucks because it makes work a lonely place when you can’t be your real self.   It’s also hard to do.   I don’t know many people who can develop a completely different persona and make their normal self something akin to a secret identity.  

I want to reiterate that I realize what I’m saying here is absolutely horrible.  It’s taking every single initiative of all the women’s movements of the last century and throwing them away.  For the record, I’m not saying that women need to become men. I’m saying both women and men need to become asexual robots, at least at work.   Although these rules apply to men and women I called this article “Rules for Women” because over the years I’ve seen situations like Molly’s again and again.  I’ve never seen anything even remotely close with men, although I’m sure it’s happened.  

As I said I was friendly with Molly.  At the time we had a conversation where she asked me my opinion on a couple of different dress options she was considering for dressing for an event.  They were, of course, very suggestive.  So I told Molly all this back then.  At the time she didn’t get it and she chose something she thought was conservative. It wasn’t.  She recently called me and told me she’s had a few other encounters over the years that were similar to when we were in that training together.  One of them got pretty bad to the point where she was told her future with the company is at stake if she continues being ‘a distraction’.  She remembered our conversation and that’s why she called. She wanted to tell me that I was right and she should have listened.  It was a nice gesture but all I could do is feel bad for her. She was basically telling me that she understood she had to hide her true self because the world, at least parts of the population she has to work with, can’t handle it and businesses don’t want anything to do with conflict relating to it.  It was killing her career.  I don’t know if she’s going to be able to change her behavior, but I know she understands better today than before about what effect it has on people. 

There is one silver lining, or maybe it’s the dark humor in all this.  If the businesses of the world get their wish and 99.9% of the tasks of the business are managed by A.I. and bots, then the world’s human population can spend 99.9% of their time enjoying life.  At that point we can go back to a place where we can all appreciate our sexuality and always be our real selves, no matter if it’s Masculine, Feminine or anything else.  

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