{"id":5576,"date":"2008-12-29T02:00:19","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T07:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=5576"},"modified":"2010-12-02T05:34:51","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T10:34:51","slug":"professional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/12\/29\/professional\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cProfessional\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Daily Mail story<\/a> reports that women lawyers are being told by “image consultants’ that to appear “professional” they should enhance their femininity by wearing skirts and stilettos, but avoid drawing attention to their breasts.\u00a0 Thoughts about the word “professional” after the screenshot (thanks to Jason S.<\/a> for the link):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the company doling out this advice says that it’s about being “professional.”\u00a0 This is a great term to take apart.\u00a0 What do we really<\/em> mean when we say “professional”?<\/p>\n

How much of it has to do with proper gender display or even, in masculinized workplaces, simply masculine display?<\/p>\n

How much of it has to do with whiteness?\u00a0 Are afros and\u00a0corn rows\u00a0unprofessional?\u00a0\u00a0 Is speaking Spanish?\u00a0 Why or why not?<\/p>\n

How much of it has to do with appearing attractive, heterosexual, monogamous, and, you know, not one of those “unAmerican” religions?<\/p>\n

For that matter, how much of it has to do with pretending like your work is your life, you are devoted to the employer, and your co-workers are like\u00a0family (anyone play Secret Santa at work this year)?<\/p>\n

What do we really mean when we say “professional”?\u00a0 How does this word get used to coerce people into upholding normative expectations that center certain kinds of people and marginalize others?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Daily Mail story reports that women lawyers are being told by “image consultants’ that to appear “professional” they should enhance their femininity by wearing skirts and stilettos, but avoid drawing attention to their breasts.\u00a0 Thoughts about the word “professional” after the screenshot (thanks to Jason S. for the link): A spokesman for the company […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,55,2089,2100,254,2125,778,1811,285,1760,1754,1757,42,54,76],"class_list":["post-5576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-gender-work","tag-holidays","tag-immigrationcitizenship","tag-intersectionality","tag-nation-britainthe-u-k","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-religion","tag-sexual-orientation","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5576"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30233,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576\/revisions\/30233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}