Source: The Friday Times (Oct 24-30, 03)
**Beauty is in the eye of the employer… **by Fatima Raja
*Wanted: A bold and beautiful lady for position of marketing executive. Must be graduate, computer literate, fluent in English. Send CV to Box 555 or call 5551212 for more information. *
I read this ad with some bemusement. I wonder what a “bold and beautiful” marketing executive is like. I picture her in my mind’s eye – tall, I’m sure, endowed with thick black hair and flashing eyes, and a swanlike grace coupled with an attractive bluntness. Very nearly my opposite, in fact.
I lift the phone receiver and dial.
A few rings, and my call is answered. “Hello, 555 Enterprises?”
I clear my throat. This is not something I do on a regular basis, you understand. Fond though I am of reading the Sunday classifieds, I’ve never yet been inspired to enquire about a position I have no intention of ever taking up. But now the journalistic beast has arisen, there is no stopping it. “I’m calling about the position of marketing executive advertised in yesterday’s newspaper?”
“Vaht?”
Score one for fluency. I try again. “I read your ad in the paper.”
“ Aik mint.”
The aik mint stretches to three before another more educated voice comes on the line. “Vaht?”
I explain about the ad. I also give some fictitious qualifications. A BA from Kinnaird College in English literature, three years working for the Export Promotion Bureau, able to use Word, Excel and Access. I can sense the gentleman on the line is impressed.
“Very good, very good. Are you married?”
This is not a proposal, or even a proposition, of course. Unmarried girls of the sort the company is looking for have a distressing propensity to get married, abandoning their careers without a second thought. That was probably why the first bold and beautiful lady left.
“There is one thing,” I say.
“Vaht?”
“You asked for a ‘bold and beautiful lady’. I was burned when I was ten years old, and my face is badly scarred.” I mouth a silent prayer for forgiveness from the legions of mutilated women who might actually have undergone this experience.
There is a silence.
“Hello?” I say.
“Send us your CV and photograph and we will get back to you,” says my prospective employer, and hangs up.
I’m not the only one to have had such an experience, of course. It’s something of a truism: our society is sexist, racist and (for lack of a better word, and only when women are concerned) facist. And that’s only one letter away from a term of abuse.
I circle another ad in another paper and read through it again thoughtfully.
*A sophisticated exquisite and most modernly equipped dental clinic requires BDS female dental surgeon with extraordinary appearance, promising attitude. Apply in confidence with CV and recent photograph to CEO. *
That’s a qualified young woman they’re looking for. Unfortunately there’s no telephone number, no way for a keen young reporter to follow it up except by writing to a mysterious post office box number. Never mind.
I meet someone who works at an advertising firm. I show Farah the ads, and she smiles bitterly.
“We were extremely busy one day, about a year or so ago,” she tells me. “One of our copywriters had quit suddenly, and the two of us remaining couldn’t cope. So the company solicited applications from young graduates.
“We got several applicants: some had done their masters in mass communications, others had high marks in their bachelors. Still others had just the sort of quick mind you need for copywriting.”
“So whom did you hire?” I ask.
“None of them. That very afternoon, as my colleague and I were short-listing applicants, the senior manager walked in with a young girl, very slim, dressed in tight black pants and a tank top. He said she was going to be our new copywriter. We asked about her qualifications – she had done her FA from a kothi college. She had no knack for copywriting, and I think had come only because she hoped to be discovered by a modelling agency. She disappeared two days later.”
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with appearance playing a significant role in hiring for jobs – no one wants a slob for a personal assistant, or an unshaven pehlwan in his vest manning the customer service desk. This care for appearance can be taken to ridiculous lengths, however. I remember the career advice office in my American college handed out an ancient photocopy of tips on how to dress for job interviews. There was a long and serious discussion on quite how many eyelets the applicant’s shoes can have before they veer perilously into the dashing. There was a portentous warning on the folly of wearing double-breasted jackets in any colour other than navy blue. And women in power suits were warned of the pitfalls of experimentation with lipstick colours.
I suppose we Pakistanis are just a little more blatant about our preference for hiring beautiful women. The PC brigade haven’t yet managed to force us to hide our vanities and superficiality, letting them grow like mushrooms in our social cellars. I’m speaking to a young student of mass communications on the phone. His name is Amjad, and he studies at a coeducational college in Lahore. His report writing teacher, he tells me, is quite frank about the advantage a pretty face can have. “She told the girls to forget about techniques of writing. All they have to do is use their inner beauty. And then she deducted marks from any girl who, she felt, lacked that inner beauty.”
“And what about the male students?” I ask curiously.
He shakes his head. “No, the men are just required to be capable and presentable.”
I suspect (the mostly male) employers have a far more elastic definition of “presentable” where men are concerned. Certainly, and most women will agree with me, the landscape of the average male-dominated Pakistani office is far from appealing. Inner beauty seems to be in tragically short supply.
A problem, perhaps, is that we’re still living in a country where it’s not entirely acceptable for a woman to work in an office. That’s rather odd, considering that our women have been doing everything from ruling empires to tending fields to dying in brick kilns for centuries. I suppose it’s the regimented Westernised aura that is The Office that drives the thinking that, on one hand, a working woman (a nurse, a secretary, a shopkeeper) is fair game, and on the other that any woman who is going to work in my office had damned well be good to look at. After all, why hire a woman if she’s not decorative? Soft on the eye, good for the clients. Never mind that she may also have a degree from the finest college in Pakistan and more brains in her pretty little finger than the rest of the office staff put together. That’s just not as important.
I ask a woman entrepreneur about her hiring practices. Alia, a designer, prides herself on being as equal opportunity as employers get in this country. “I advertised for a saleswoman some time ago. Female, yes; our clients like dealing with women.” And did she have requirements as to dress or appearance? “Well turned out is desirable in both men and women. Physical appearance otherwise doesn’t really matter to our firm. Most of our clients are female anyway.”
Curious, I ask whether she, as a female business owner, has found that her appearance has mattered in her dealings.
She shrugs. “It’s funny how women entrepreneurs get both the better and the worse deal in this country. On one hand are all the disadvantages of being a woman working in a man’s world, and the necessity of appearing more confident and professional than any man will ever have to. On the other, there is the simple fact that men prefer to do business with women, because they feel that women are more likely to be honest.”
And that, I reflect, is something of a mind-twister. Is it an insult to the race of men, to the race of women, or a charming insight into male gullibility?
So what am I lobbying for? Equality? Skimming through the Sunday classified to find the following?
*Wanted: Male publicity manager, Greek god graduate or MBA proficient with Microsoft Office applications *
Well, no. More handsome men on the officescape would be nice, certainly, but I must admit, reluctantly, that is really not the chief issue. I’d settle for beauty and dress sense not being assets that can trump every other qualification for women, thank you very much.
Perhaps it would be enough to be able to open the paper and see something along the following lines.
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has some reality to it…
but overall dont u think its a lot of whining???