How Clothes Construct an Inner and Projected Gender

In 1998, while working as a customer service representative handling major accounts for a Fortune 500 copier company, I had an experience that highlights Loeber's perspective in how clothes construct both the inner gender as well as a projected gender. My conscious act in this experience raised great debate amongst career women within the organization, and in me as well.

At the time, I had responsibility for over 250 accounts, all of which were Fortune 500 major New York financial institutions. As you might imagine, these accounts had several offices worldwide, however their corporate headquarters maintained the decisions for purchasing and payables. My duties included developing standardized billing systems for all affiliates, compilation and submission of billing, collection of payables, as well as all customer service issues arising at any location. It came to our attention that a new VP of Payables took position at one of these financial institutions, and he absolutely refused to work with a woman. He would not take phone calls from anyone at our office unless it was a man. Unfortunately, besides our manager, there were no men on the Financial Institutions team; however we of course did not acknowledge this. They transferred the account to me as the Senior Representative on the team and as someone who worked well with several male counterparts in New York's financial district, to no avail.

The next step was to schedule a visit so my male superior could introduce me to the new VP with an assurance that I was highly capable of assisting him with any issue that may arise. After having worked for the same supervisor over ten years, we had became personal friends as well, so when we met over bloody Mary's in a La Guardia lounge at 9 a.m. on the morning of the site visit, he was visibly astounded by my attire. Usually a conservative dresser in blue, black, gray or brown suits with mid-knee length skirts, this day I wore a cream floral print Liz Claiborne with a skirt that hit well above the knee, and a lace chemise beneath the jacket that allowed a bit of cleavage to peek through. I answered his quizzical look with a sly wink and we proceeded to Wall Street. During our meeting around a walnut conference table in a glass-enclosed office high above Wall Street, the new VP rarely took his eyes from the skirt that I allowed to slide up my legs. We ended the meeting with a dinner that concluded in leather armchairs before a fireplace with Courvoisier and Corona cigars, the deal as customer service representative to handle his account squarely sealed as solely mine.

Miller states in "Domination and Subordination" that, "Subordinates, then, know much more about the dominants than vice versa...able to predict their reactions of pleasure and displeasure" (113). As a woman, I knew from intuition, that the VP was the type of man described by Jan in Miller's excerpt, "...men prefer women to be less informed, less able, less talkative, and certainly less self-centered than they are themselves" (59). While I never curtailed by intelligence or my own sense of self-assuredness, I gave the VP the visual equivalent of what he felt a woman should be, thereby allowing him to concentrate on his constructed and desired perception of femininity and not the uncomfortable threat of emasculation. In other words, I gave him what he wanted to get what I wanted. I felt that I played the game and was victor. However, that was not the perception of several female co-workers who were outraged.

At first, I dismissed the disparity as jealousy over the bonus I received. Both male co-workers and female superiors were ecstatic with my performance. Congratulations circled, the story repeated around the water cooler and within our own board rooms, and I received quite a few of the "she thinks like a man" slaps on the back. My personal thought on the subject was that I had beaten him at his own game. However, after much debate with others and personal dialogue with myself, I began to wonder if I had not just internalized my own oppression. As noted by Paulo Freire's excerpt in "Internalized Racism" by Osajima, "At a certain point in their existential experience the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration. In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressor, to imitate, to follow him (140). Some feminist opponents call this "penis envy."

I certainly did throughout my youth and well into middle age, and still do occasionally, feel offended when it is insinuated that I cannot do what men can. The internal struggle remains, yet I have experienced first hand the toil on the psyche when women live as men. I can still, if I choose, work in the cutthroat manner of corporate male dominated management and succeed. I can still, if I choose to, do my own oil change and/or brake job. I choose to allow a man to do these things, or a woman if they choose to be in that position. I would argue that it is not in the psychological make-up of women to perform certain male functions and if they choose to do so, may suffer an emotional break from their nurturing nature. We may very well be creating, or have already created, a new generation of women that no longer suffer this separation and I must ask at what cost to society.

I support the premise of a woman not being categorized by her gender-I will not accept being told what I can or cannot do, it should be completely a matter of choice. Yet, I do not believe that we our teaching our young women the consequences of those choices, nor the possible reasoning behind those choices, one of which is internalized oppression. Yes, we may choose to be strippers to pay our way through college, or we may choose to be soldiers or corporate executives, and whatever clothes-or lack of-that we adorn our bodies with will certainly present a constructed image, the situations and the reactions to those situations most definitely will construct an internal image as well. The question is what do we want that internal image to look like?

Works Cited
Miller, Jean Baker. "Domination and Subordination." Race, Class, and Gender in United States History (2007): 108-114

Osajimi, Keith. "Internalized Racism." Race, Class, and Gender in United States History (2007): 138-143