BY Lux Alptraum
November 2, 2007
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Time and again, we hear debates about women, fashion, and work — or, to be blunt, complaints about ladies being too sexy in the workplace. What we never seem to hear, however, are complaints about men being too sexy. We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again (and The New York Times agrees): it’s not that men don’t dress sexy, it’s that the things that make men sexy (power, money, status) aren’t viewed as being in conflict with success in the workplace.

Just to hammer it home, here’s a quote from the aforementioned Times piece:

He is the author of one such study, in which he showed respondents a video of a woman wearing a sexy low-cut blouse with a tight skirt or a skirt and blouse that were conservatively cut. The woman recited the same lines in both, and the viewer was either told she was a secretary or an executive. Being more provocatively dressed had no effect on the perceived competence of the secretary, but it lowered the perceived competence of the executive dramatically. (Sexy men don’t have that disconnect, Professor Glick said. While they might lose respect for wearing tight pants and unbuttoned shirts to the office, the attributes considered most sexy in men — power, status, salary — are in keeping with an executive image at work.)