Just because a good-looking woman wears revealing clothes in public doesn’t mean she wants to be groped, leered at or ogled. She doesn’t want catcalls, whistles or lewd comments. Most especially, she doesn’t invite sexual harassment, violence or rape. Her scanty attire doesn’t mean “she’s asking for it.”

And if she resists come-ons, she is not a bitch or any of the litanies of vulgar and sexually-charged insults men casually toss in the direction of women. One would presume, after all these years of feminism that somewhere along the line young men would learn to correctly interpret the signals women give out.

Too bad, that a lot of man still believes that skimpy clothes are an invitation to unwanted advances. While sexism is still prevalent in the world, usually it is clothed in the language of equality and approval, backed by appropriate workplace standards. When it comes to those men whose sensation of appellation is encouraged by the respect paid them - think professional sports teams - women have it rougher, especially if they are “unavailable” to the men in question. So many of the arguments surrounding what women wear, when and how they reveal their bodies, and what the “message” must be, completely ignore the fact that it is not mine or any other woman’s job to control the impulses of a man’s body.

Control is his responsibility and when male role models fathers, for example start teaching their sons that it is they who are responsible for controlling themselves, the world will become a safer place for all women. At the very least, there is double standard at work: Human biology and sexual attraction and the right of women to control their own bodies.

A young woman’s beauty and her nubile flesh - her air of availability are used to sell everything and for many women, it is their passport to entitlement and riches. It is not chance that the wives and girlfriends of young and rich sports stars and old and rich executives mostly look stamped out from the same factory and appear interchangeable and, sometimes, are like most trophies.

Must women always be judged on their appearance first, their demeanor second, and their competence at their jobs somewhere down the line? It’s a demeaning and degrading standard that doesn’t have any signs of vanishing, even though it should be as antiquated as hoop skirts. There is, as yet, no clear-cut solution to the problem ambitious women must face in inventing a suitable costume for their business role, the most important consideration for women is the underlying symbolism of clothing. If your clothes don’t convey the message that you are competent, able, ambitious, self-confident, reliable and authoritative, nothing you say or do will overcome the negative signals emanating from your apparel.

Those words still apply, regardless of whether the workplace is an office or a locker room.

Marketing Manager World Technology Network 2013 H Street, NY, 10001, USA 559-4812

http://www.womans-world.info/