Last week, I returned to the age-old question of what butches should wear to interviews. In a short poll, I posed the following hypothetical: Imagine helping a butch lesbian decide what to wear for an entry-level professional interview (e.g., lawyer, consultant, finance, manager, gov't, professor, etc.). She usually wears men's clothes, but identifies and presents as female, though people sometimes accidentally call her "sir." She tells you, "I know the employers are kind of conservative, though I also know things are slowly changing. I'm a solid candidate but not a shoe-in. What should I wear? I gave six choices and asked how to advise our butch professional wannabe: #1: Fit in first, THEN change the system. Wear what other women there wear: makeup, heels, whatever you have to. #2: Be yourself, but show you're willing to play the game. Wear only the women's stuff you're most comfortable in--skip the makeup and heels! #3: Wear a combo to help you fit in a little--e.g., a plain women's suit, collared shirt, men's shoes. #4: You like men's clothes; wear a men's suit and shirt and shoes, but no tie or other uber-masculine gear that'd alienate you from your interviewers. #5: Men's clothes, including a tie. If they don't want you, you don't want to work there. If you can't get a job in the industry, it's not for you! #6: As long as you wear something nice, clean, etc., it doesn't matter. People judge you for who you are, not what you wear. Here are the results: As you can see, I also calculated the average age for each response. For a small survey, these age differences don't matter much, and goodness knows this isn't anything close to a representative sample (of the population overall, of butches, or even of BW readers), but it's interesting to think about. A few numbers that caught my eye, and possible explanations:
And finally, here's a sampling of the write-in comments: Thanks for these great thoughts. If you're trying to figure out how to break into the profession you want without compromising who you are, you are certainly not alone.
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Got any of your own life hacks to share? A few weeks ago I wrote this article recounting my pseudo-gender-conforming job search. Shortly thereafter, a butch superstar six or seven years ahead of me in my field reached out about the article, and we ended up having coffee and chatting about her experiences. Not only was she even more awesome than I’d hoped, but she had interesting theories about butch clothing selection that are way too interesting not to share.
Said superstar proposed the following:
The bottom line is that Superstar says to go for a men's suit next time—at least, it worked for her. So maybe I will. Or maybe I'll go back and forth, since I like both men's and women's suits that are relatively gender-neutral in appearance (e.g., no cutesy buttons for women's suits, no mega-structured shoulders for men's suits). But I do like wearing ties, which tend to look better with men's suits. Superstar had no major opinion on ties, since she doesn't wear them herself, but since they are THE quintessential "men's" professional clothing item, maybe a tie would be more likely to be looked on unfavorably by prospective hirers. What do you think about Superstar’s theories? Let's unscientifically test one of them! Click here to take a SUPER-quick 2-question quiz. I'll post the results this weekend. |
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