charloween

Firing your waitress because she shaved her head for a cancer charity? Really?

It's an interesting story because of the elephant in the room that no one's mentioning: this woman's boss only wanted pretty waitresses with nice hair. It's a bit boggling how anyone - even in the not-very-cosmopolitan Owen Sound - could think this was a good idea.

But, seriously? Did he think she wouldn't go to the media? Did he think at all? It boggles the mind, truly and completely.

EDIT:
I talked with

piratefanatic about this, and we had an interesting discussion. In my original post, I had quoted this part of the article: "If something were acceptable if done by a man but not by a woman, then there might be a basis for a complaint," she told CBC News."

That's the crux of it. The problem (and the reason I took it out) is because, as

piratefanatic said, "it's almost impossible to talk about gender inequality without coming off as a) a rampant feminist or b) a misogynistic pig".

I didn't really want to go off in a feminist rant, 'cause feminists who feel the need to self-identify make me leery. It's kind of a whole other matter, only because my mother was/is a feminist and I was raised in an environment where gender equality isn't an issue as much as a given. Dad stayed home to raise the kids and do the cooking-cleaning-laundry thing while Mum went out to work. Having to say "yeah, I'm a feminist" seems redundant.

Back to the issue, then: I want to know if the doofus-boss really think that this woman wouldn't go to the media with this story? I ask this because I make assumptions about her, assumptions about her personality and her passion, forcefulness, strength that kind of thing. A woman with a shaved head is seen as an aberation, because it's an expectation that women will wear her hair in a particular way. Well, it's mostly that she'll have hair.

Again, it goes to a personal thing for me: I waffled for months on whether or not to cut my hip-length hair and donate it. I still would have lots of hair left after the fact, but it was still a big decision. The shock of that experience was realizing (at the event, with cameras in my face) exactly how important hair and hairstyles are on an emotional level.

So, given all that, I believe that a woman who will shave her head for cancer research would have to have a passionate, strong personality, and therefore not someone to take it lying down when she's fired for (more or less) not conforming to traditional femininity.

....But then I deleted that part of the post. I've added it back in (with more comments and notes!) because it seems so strange that I decided to edit it out. I'm not sure where my reluctance to include it comes from. I made a crack to

piratefanatic about how the elephant in the room is, like, burning its bra at us. It just seems so obviously absurd that this woman got fired. But then, is it actually that obvious? Not to the boss who fired her.

When it comes down to it, it's not the act itself that bugs me (her boss is a dick, end of story) it's the bizarre way we have tiptoe around this. It appears the grounds of her firing was that she didn't conform to what a waitress was supposed to look like. Her hairstyle shouldn't be an issue: it doesn't affect how she does her job. It may affect the kind of tips she gets (positively or negatively). But then we get into a whole can of worms about the appearance of normative femininity, the socially-constructed expectations about what a waitress is and should be, the rights of a business owner to have his employees wear a particular uniform (be it policies on clothing, hairstyle, body jewelery)...

Or maybe I'm making this bigger than it has to be?

Sorry, no profundity here... just a bit of confusion. :S