Guys get a taste of their own (collective) medicine when Leah Green behaves like an outrageously sexist woman. If you haven’t seen this Guardian video yet, it’s worth the few minutes of your day. Especially, you know, if you’ve ever objectified a woman.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Yet another example of rampant sexism in the professional world, this time, in the form of a legal memo.

Women make up over 33 percent of the legal profession, and more women than ever before are graduating law school and getting jobs at the nation’s top law firms. Yet they still have to put up with flagrant sexism.

It reads like something from the 1950s, but a sexist legal memo that recently surfaced on Above the Law is actually a product of this decade. Clifford Chance, an international law firm with 3,400 legal advisers in 25 countries is under fire for a memo titled Presentation Tips for Women. The shocking legal memo reminds women not to giggle or say the word “like” when making a presentation. And that’s just the beginning.

First off, why do women need a separate list of presentation tips? Whomever pulled this thought-provoking work together obviously had their reasons. Read on–the memo is filled with a slew of stereotypes including “You’re a friendly professional, not a professional friend.” You know, because those women always want to be your best friend [insert sarcasm here]. Other mind blowing tips in the legal memo include:

• Don’t giggle
• Work through your nerves: don’t drink caffeine; eat something but not too much; and don’t drink alcohol. (Because women are such lushes.)
• Don’t take your purse to the podium.
• Wear a suit, not your party outfit.
• Wear understated jewelry, nothing jingly or clanky
• Make sure you can stand in your heels, not trip, and don’t rock back on them.

But none of the tips compares to my very favorite ridiculously sexist comment of all, “No one heard Hillary the day she showed cleavage.”

Yes, that happened. So while women have made progress in the legal field, it’s no thanks to the sexist individuals like the author of this law firm memo.  Thank you Above the Law for bringing it to everyone’s attention.

Related on EcoSalon:
The Most Ridiculous Quotes About Women 
The Return of the Sacred Masculine
Working Girl to Work Life

Image: didbygraham

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ColumnWas this year’s Oscars an exercise in sexism? Or is that just how Hollywood is?

There was a great moment on E!’s Fashion Police Oscars edition when Sarah Silverman made a rape joke. Joan Rivers followed with: “My first sexual experience was a rape…” As she trailed off looking forlorn, then the two women caught eyes and said nearly simultaneously, “But did he press charges?” and then tumbled over in hysterical laughter—and so did I.

One could argue that Sarah and Joan’s joke was no worse than what happened at the actual Oscars, that it was, in fact, a direct extension of the mean-spirited nature of the show and proof that the cool girls are in on the joke.

Yes, we live in a culture where mean is the new cool. Example: The existence of Tosh.O. And, even the always eager-to-please Anne Hathaway mentioned to a red carpet interviewer that she loves Cards Against Humanity, which is easily the meanest, funniest game I’ve ever played. I play viciously and to win because, in many ways, I am a fan of the culture of mean. I revel in a snide remark. Dorothy Parker is one of my personal heroes, and I actually use the word cunt on a comparatively (to almost anyone) regular basis.

The trouble with what happened at the Oscars, and after, is that the mean wasn’t funny; it was sexist. The cool girls weren’t making the jokes; they were the butts.

We all know the basics by now, but here’s the quick recap: Seth MacFarlane opened the show with a campy song and dance about whose boobs he’d seen in what movie—the level of joy he expressed at glimpsing Jodie Foster’s breasts during the rape scene in The Accused was especially disturbing. Amy Davidson broke down the real message of the song best in her extremely dead-on New Yorker piece: “You girls think you’re making art, the Academy, through MacFarlane, seemed to say, but all we—and the “we” was resolutely male—really see is that we got you to undress. The joke’s on you.”

He then went on to insult gay people, Jewish people, Quvenzhane Wallis, George Clooney, Rihanna, Latinos (the men got a shout-out here as well), and our intelligence.

Later in the show, he sang a song, omitting the second half of a rhyming couplet, the first half of which ended with “Helen Hunt.” In that moment, he opened the door for the tweet. This one. The one in which The Onion called a fist-pumping, genuinely just happy to be nominated, nine-year-old girl a cunt.

In what I think was a direct response to that last song of the night—and actually a jab at MacFarlane’s stupid joke rather than a comment about Wallis herself—The Onion referred to a little girl who brought a puppy purse to the Oscars a cunt. It happened, and regardless of why, it was a terrible mistake, one the paper apologized for in the best way possible.

What bothers me most about all of this—which is saying quite a bit, considering—is that as a “cool” girl who tosses words like cunt around on the regular, I am supposed to see that I am in on the joke and laugh along or risk being labeled as an uptight prude.

A blogger on Low Boredom Threshold took the opportunity to shame us into being okay with sexism cloaked in humor by writing: “I honestly believe there were two completely different Academy Awards programs telecast … To be blunt, I think one show was streamed to people who are intelligent, knowledgeable, self-confident and culturally tuned in and a second one that was streamed to people who are as dull as a stump [sic] with a poor sense of self, a minimal sense of humor and absolutely no sense of irony.”

You know who’s super into irony? Nine-year-olds.

If you’ll allow, here’s my “stump” speech: Ohhhh… irony—yeah, I get it. Sideboob is one of this year’s biggest fashion trends and we’re all suddenly incensed by a song about boobs? Women show up to the party with slits up to their, uh Hunts, and we’re not supposed to sexualize them? A man takes the opportunity to put down women for close to four hours on TV and we’re all supposed to think it’s funny so we don’t seem like militants. That’s not irony; it’s bullying.

In a country where elected officials think a baby is a woman’s biggest organ and that some rape might be legitimate, and in a world where girls (and boys) from New York to Thailand are subjected to sex trafficking, I admit it’s a little lame to be spending this much time debating an awards show. However, when you have the chance to talk to hundreds of millions of people, even as a comedian, you might want to do better than make boob jokes.

Image: Dave_B_

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The tech industry is forward-thinking in all areas except one: its treatment of women.

We are a species divided at the mid point between our two legs. There’s no question about that. Men and women, we think differently, most certainly, about each other. But now in the midst of our most modern human times where we see ourselves as evolved both in our thinking about our fellow humans and in the highly technological world we’re building, we are still predisposed to gender bias and exploitation, particularly in the burgeoning tech industry. But sexist? Really?

A recent Forbes magazine article reported on the recent CES (Consumer Electronic Show) where the examples of sexism seemed to be plenty. One of the largest and most well-attended shows of its kind, the show takes place in Las Vegas, a city steeped in a tradition of glamorous, or at least, half-naked women. The most obvious offender was the number of women working at CES booths that looked like your typical Vegas showgirls, according to the blog Mom 101 (as reported by Forbes) “some companies thought the best way to get attention was to pay strippers to act like strippers outside of their normal gig at the strip clubs.”

And it wasn’t just the scantily clad showgirls at the tech booths that had CES flavored with oopswrongshow; the speakers and presenters rosters were largely male-dominated as well, even despite the fact that the show’s own parent organization has said that women spend more money on tech than men. Mom 101’s Liz Gumbinner writes: “They’re involved in 89% of the consumer electronic purchase decisions. They own smartphones and digital cameras and laptops and tablets. They buy apps like crazy. And you know? They’re writing about technology too.” Forbes’ Tim Worstall adds an incredibly important point: “Women control up to 80% of all discretionary consumer expenditure. This is something the consumer industries realised decades ago and explains why it is always the women (read, the Moms or future to be such) in the advertisements who actually know what they’re doing. The men are a doofus of one sort or another, incapable of finding their own belt without their wife directing them to their own waist.” Gumbinner, a tech expert in her own right, was also met with startling comments such as some of the gadgets would “ruin her nails” and that old favorite, “you know, for the mom at home.”

Perhaps it’s our Mad Men obsession and the bygone era where women were convinced  content to be stay-at-home caretakers and dishwashers regardless of what they could—or would—be amazing at doing if given the chance. Worstall again: “This isn’t a feminist point in any manner at all. Indeed, it’s an anti-feminist one in many ways. There are indeed inequalities between men and women and one of them is that women have more influence over household spending than men do. Which means that if you’re in a consumer industry you’d better be doing what the other consumer industries do: market to women. Because they do still control, to a large extent, the purse strings.”

And if it seems unfair that women control so much of our spending, perhaps that’s because it’s still obvious that if left up to men, all the money would (clearly) be spent on strippers who most likely were wishing they could make nearly as much money doing something they felt a whole lot more passionate about. But then again, making men pay us to take off our clothes suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: smswigart

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

The fashion industry is emerging from its cocoon post-recession, a changed sector where consumers are more cautious, manufacturers are on their toes and designers are struggling to stay afloat doing business as usual. In this five-part series, we take a hard look at the fashion world, speaking with industry leaders, luminaries and experts. We kicked it off this week with Part One: The Post Recession Fashion Industry: An Interview With Lucy Siegle.

In her latest column, Shade Grown Hollywood: Why Is Violence Against Women In Movies So Popular?, Katherine Butler asks, “Does sadistic violence against anyone on film ever have a point?”

This week, HeARTbeat columnist Dominique Pacheco wrtes about artist Jeffrey Wang’s use of recycled Levi’s to challenge our perceptions about functional fashion and art. Persona, Jeffrey Wang‘s collaboration with Levi’s and Taiwan’s Fubon Art Foundation, can’t help but make us rethink the way we see denim in a very artistic light.

Due to the common use of assisted reproductive technology, twins and triplets are now subconsciously labeled “natural” or “unnatural.” Senior Editor Andrea Newell, a mother of twins, writes in her article Lovely. Are They Natural?: “It is universally the most-hated question asked of parents of multiples, followed closely by ‘You must have your hands full!’ or ‘Better you than me.’ In just three words, strangers pry into your method of conception – a private and intimate moment – and tack a label on your children. Using the term ‘natural’ to describe children conceived without any help automatically conveys what the asker thinks of children who were conceived using assisted reproductive technology (unnatural).”

Eating ice cream in the summertime is just tradition. Artisanal ice cream, however, is keeping the summer streets hotter than usual with unusual flavor combinations like infused lavender, beer and sea salt. Foodie Underground columnist Anna Brones explores these and more in We All Scream For Artisanal Ice Cream.

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