Dialogue: Boring dress is best way to highlight true talents

There are times and places for the clothes that show the real you but the workplace is not one of them, writes LOUISA HERD*.

Christine Rankin wore groin-skimming skirts to work and is now upset because some of her male colleagues passed remarks on her dress sense and her shapely legs. Does she seriously expect other females, who have struggled long and hard for the acceptance of women in the workplace, to feel sorry for her?

Why would any woman of her talent and intelligence buy into the Anna Kournikova school of style without substance?

Men, the poor darlings, are visual creatures, which is why an ugly woman stands little chance of finding a man who appreciates her noble character, sense of humour, or talents in the home-baking line.

I have personal experience of this but was lucky enough to meet a short-sighted bloke. The day he finds the glasses I hid 15 years ago will probably be the day he asks for a divorce.

We live in an era of shallow, bedazzling images, where how a thing looks is more important than how it actually functions.

When radio ruled the pop charts, we had Cilla Black, who could sing the roof off, but who had buck teeth and ginger hair. Now that songs are marketed by television and video, we have gorgeous, pouting Britney Spears, who sounds like a hamster on acid.

Think tennis players, boys, and who springs to mind but the pulchritudinous Ms Kournikova, who is famed not for her killer backhand but for flashing her knickers at paparazzi the world over.

The flip side of being famous for long golden legs and the figure of a Venus is that no one takes your other endeavours seriously, no matter how laudable.

This is why businesswomen tend to echo their male counterparts and put on the feminine version of the grey suit. Boring, yes, but at least your attainments stand on their own merits without your colleagues wondering if the boss looked favourably on your work because it was good, or because you gave him a tantalising glimpse of succulent thigh before pulling out your report.

There are times and places for the clothes that show the real you, but the workplace is not one of them.

Would you trust a surgeon who appeared on the ward to explain your upcoming appendectomy wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt and a pair of bondage trousers? Rather have the chap in the suit and tie? Yep, me too, even if the heavy metaller medico held every degree Harvard had to offer.

Looking for an accountant to prepare your tax returns? Do you pick blond, blue eyes, 36-22-36 Tiffany, wearing a sequinned boob-tube, leather mini and five-inch stilettos, or Ms Brown, clad in ankle-length charcoal worsted, white blouse and horn-rims?

When caterpillar Ms Brown hits the sauce with her bean-counter cohorts at the bar on a Friday, she metamorphoses into butterfly Tiffany. Tiffany can swing off the chandelier in the pub and flirt with sad-sack sales reps, but Ms Brown would never allow her behind the accountant's desk.

For women, especially, the rules governing appropriate dress in the workplace are broken at one's peril. We have not attained equality, no matter what some say.

A female worker still has to do her job 100 per cent better than a man to gain grudging acceptance and is given a hell of a lot less leeway to make mistakes. Why hand the leering bogeymen of the office even more ammunition to fire at us?

They'll ogle your bottom in those tight little skirts, then tell each other on the golf course that you only got that last promotion because you slept with the managing director. Bang goes your elevation to the boardroom. All that hard work researching Patagonian securities wasted for the sake of a few more inches of fabric. Is it worth it?

Certain of the more vacuous women's magazines have made a mint pushing the absurd fallacy of exploiting your female sexuality at work.

Why on earth would anyone want to ooze sex appeal on the job? What has sexuality to do with nursing, teaching, accountancy, information technology or running a large Government department.

In fact, unless one is looking at a career in modelling or prostitution, it has no relevance at all. The only thing that matters is being the best nurse, teacher or chief executive you possibly can be.

Turn up for work looking like a cabaret turn from Moulin Rouge and no one will remember that you were the dedicated teacher who finally got little Johnny to learn his times tables, that you were the quick-thinking nurse who saved a patient's life, or that your clever management strategies saved millions of dollars.

They'll only eye your hemline and wonder if you get a cold bum in winter.

* Louisa Herd is a Wellsford writer.