An article on business website BNET by former Adweek managing editor Jim Edwards has suggested Karalee Evans got a job at Amnesia Razorfish through a “whore yourself out” social media campaign. In this guest posting, she asks for an apology.
Dear BNET and Jim, Your article ‘6 weirdest ways to get a job in advertising’ is odd, and here’s why.
Newsflash: it’s 2010, not the Mad Men days of the 1960s (thankfully).
While statistics show that at each rung moving up the corporate ladder, the proportion of women diminishes, women are increasingly recognised as being equal across discipline roles in advertising agencies and many successful agencies are led by intelligent women – Stephanie Paul, MD of The Phillips Group and Melinda Geertz, CEO of Leo Burnett Melbourne – are just two examples.
ADVERTISEMENT
Indeed, organisations such as Columbia University (your own alma mater), McKinsey & Co, Goldman Sachs, and Pepperdine University, have conducted research documenting a clear relationship between women in senior management, and corporate financial success.
Yet even in 2010, there are examples of men displaying overt sexism and discrimination across workplaces, social situations and even in journalism – once purported the principal of setting cultural norms.
BNET.com and Jim Edwards; your choice to refer to my campaign of reverse recruitment as ‘whoring herself’ is one such example of sexist, defamatory and down-right childish portrayal of women, and speaks volumes on your publication. Not only am I personally disgusted, but I’m angry on behalf of all women who struggle every day in advertising agencies (and indeed any workplace) to be seen as valuable and equal.
Sexualising the ‘skirt for hire’ campaign – that was reported here on Mumbrella in what generated great discussion around equality and the merits of the campaign, with no reference of ‘whoring’ – and referring to it in a manner that infers I ‘slept’ around to get my position at Amnesia Razorfish, is repulsive and defamatory.
Joking around and glorifying the other five examples – which happen to be all men – including slapping one on the back for creating a nude centrefold, is just transparent sexism. The blokey camaraderie of promoting and admiring five men’s ‘weird job’ seeking campaigns is nothing astonishing. But to blatantly infer that a female sold herself for sex when it was a simple reverse recruitment campaign is indeed the very thing my campaign sought to denounce.
A simple question, Jim: why, in an article that only featured one female, do you feel compelled to label me a ‘whore’ yet the five men are revered?
Here’s the thing, Jim: female strategists and account services are referred to as ‘skirts’ in a term that yes is sexist, but mostly it’s endearing within the industry. Just like male strategists and account services are referred to as ‘suits’. It’s fun, a little derogatory, but mostly, it’s a tradition that dates back to the Mad Men days of advertising’s revolution into mainstream culture with the advent of the TV.
As a female working in advertising, I’m very rarely referred to as a ‘skirt’. In fact, in most agencies, the female account services’ are more often endearingly referred to as ‘suits’, referencing their ‘corporate (client) and financial focus’ – a key element of any agency. And most of these wonderfully intelligent women wear dresses, skirts and even blouses.
The gambit that women take to present themselves as feminine and to sexualize themselves in a feminine way isn’t an invitation to men to push these boundaries and own this as their own.
Women, particularly in the workplace, don’t dress to impress men. They dress to impress themselves, with their own sexuality and confidence empowering them to succeed, rather than to engender male respect. But even if they do, it’s much more complicated than merely being empowered. The real world is much more complicated.
In Mad Men, the women are all afraid that they will have no identity, no real worth, unless they assume the identity of a man or are at least validated by being appealing to these men. In fact, one episode refers to women being either a Marilyn (whore) or a Jackie (trophy wife). This sexism and inequality is culturally conditioned and condoned.
What is interesting, Jim, is over 45 years later, how much of that fear is still present, and how much, or little, of the cultural conditioning has changed. I’d argue your choice of language in your article is exactly what Peggy was swimming against in 1965.
- Karalee Evans is social strategy manager at digtial agency Amnesia Razorfish