Repent at Leisure
The Observer’s Nicole Mowbray reveals the hitherto-unguessed fact that poor fashion choices can have practical consequences:
After seven unsuccessful job interviews, 24-year-old Luke Clark began to think something other than his CV was playing havoc with his job prospects. Potential employers didn’t seem to like the 4cm “flesh tunnel” holes he had in each ear as much as he did. Clark had begun stretching his lobes at university several years earlier, and the problem was that when he took the plugs out his stretched earlobes looked terrible. Now one of the fastest-growing cosmetic procedures in the UK is repairing stretched earlobes.
Several readers of said paper are, however, quite upset. Specifically, they’re upset that not all employers are impressed, either by the Urban Bush Warrior look or by self-inflicted comedy lobes with large, baggy holes in them:
It’s just a bigger hole than what society has considered to be “standard” and judging someone’s ability to do a job based on their outward appearance is incredibly ignorant… If there wasn’t such a pointlessly negative view on stretched ears, people like teachers and professional golf players wouldn’t have to get them sewn up.
Possibly a contender for our series of classic sentences.
And this chap here, he’s upset too:
Until you know that person, you have no right to criticise, judge or alter the life chances for them. Those who make decisions about the future of others based only on appearance, are themselves the shallowest of people, and do not deserve to have such a position of influence.
You see, he should be free to deform his anatomy into eye-catchingly unattractive shapes, thereby announcing his heroic radicalism and disdain for bourgeois norms, entirely without consequence. But you mustn’t be free to run your business without him, regardless of whatever message he’s chosen to send via the medium of disfigured earlobes. No bad decision that he makes must ever “alter his life chances” because… well, obviously, it’s all your fault.
And so we’re expected to believe that Mr Clark, who chose to make a bold statement by deliberately stretching and deforming his earlobes – to the extent that a jar of instant coffee could almost fit through the holes – is somehow being wronged, indeed oppressed, when, during job interviews, potential employers notice – and find inappropriate – the bold statement he’s chosen to make. Having decided at university to scandalise the less daring whenever in public, he now seems surprised when those same less daring people make choices of their own, i.e., not to hire him. But aren’t their raised eyebrows and looks of disgust what he wanted all along?
Foresight is an oppressive bourgeois construct.
Foresight is an oppressive bourgeois construct.
And on top of his new-found ability to repel employers, Mr Clark will also have to contend with being considered a lightweight in terms of facial modification. I mean, you can hardly call yourself hardcore until you’ve got a lip plate, a cheek hole, and ultra-massive hoops with optional beer can enhancement.
It’s a clue, I think, as to why British industry has struggled to cope in the modern era. We are still largely managed by people for whom the right appearance and background matter more than ability or productivity and for many this seems natural and even right. It’s a pity, but things can change.
This guy, on the other hand, is totally rocking it.
After seven unsuccessful job interviews, 24-year-old Luke Clark began to think something other than his CV was playing havoc with his job prospects.
I note that thanks to the Guardian’s exemplary journalistic standards, we are not actually told *what* jobs Luke Clark has been applying for or, given that as a 24 year-old graduate, whether or not it really *is* his CV that is lacking in the experience and skills the employers are looking for and that’s for reason why he doesn’t have a job yet.
Still, I suppose some will raise the argument that if you can interview and employ a woman wearing a niqab or burqa, why not a guy with handles for ears?
a cheek hole,
That’s not going to end well.
Clark had begun stretching his lobes at university
That.
“Still, I suppose some will raise the argument that if you can interview and employ a woman wearing a niqab or burqa, why not a guy with handles for ears? ”
I will if nobody else wants to. If you decide not to interview a woman in a niqab just because eh is in a niqab you may be missing the best candidate. Foolish. Same goes for ears we may not like. This is the thing with social authoritarianism: it ends up biting you in the arse.
Out: bourgeois norms that help get you a job.
In: anti-bourgeois norms that get you shown the door.
Progress!
I will if nobody else wants to. If you decide not to interview a woman in a niqab just because eh is in a niqab you may be missing the best candidate. Foolish. Same goes for ears we may not like. This is the thing with social authoritarianism: it ends up biting you in the arse.
Minnow, are you trying to be ironic?
“It’s a clue, I think, as to why British industry has struggled to cope in the modern era. We are still largely managed by people for whom the right appearance and background matter more than ability or productivity and for many this seems natural and even right. It’s a pity, but things can change.”
Pfft. And where do you work exactly?
I’m so productive and able that I can wear this t-shirt to work every day:
http://tinyurl.com/kkw3tuk
What’s more, the boss has a tattoo of a spider web on his neck, and we’re ok with that. You should see his productivity levels!
It’s all ok because we’re at the forefront of British industry, so we can stick two fingers up to those bourgeois squares!
If your workspace seems stuffy in compaison, have faith: I’m sure our enlightened stance will become ever more commonplace throughout the UK. British Industry demands it, after all.
This is the thing with social authoritarianism: it ends up biting you in the arse.
But is it socially authoritarian? Our ear-stretching hipsters – our non-conformist conformists – are, after all, free to look clownish and narcissistic, and thereby fit in with their peers. Their ears are still their own. Just as potential employers are free to make judgments based on (among other things) what they see during the interview, and what that may imply about the person sitting there. Is that more authoritarian than, say, insisting that other people should be forced to employ you regardless of how you choose to present yourself, and regardless of how that chosen appearance might affect the employer’s customers and the image of their business?
I’ve no wish to prevent people looking pretentious or silly, but the scenario above is a transaction with two parties and (maybe) wider considerations, at least for one of those parties. Basically, why choose to do something that is likely to make one’s chances of being hired slimmer, perhaps very slim indeed, and then complain about being rejected in favour of someone else? Why prioritise ostentatious ear-stretching – a fairly frivolous expression of vanity and transient fashion – above something rather more important, like getting a job and earning a living?
Minnow – We are still largely managed by people for whom the right appearance and background matter more than ability or productivity and for many this seems natural and even right.
I agree with you!
I’ve always gotten by because I look good in a tailored suit, know the latest corporate buzzwords, am able to hold my drink and feign interest in golf, and shamelessly exploit the girls in my team by taking full credit for their work, while blaming them for any failures.
If you sound like you know what you’re talking about, say everything with absolute authority and conviction even when you only have a hazy idea of what’s going on, people follow you. It’s brilliant.
I do final round interviews for my company after HR has supposedly weeded out the dross. Heh. I can say with pride that nobody with piercings, weird hair, visible tattoos, or anything else like that has ever gotten past me. I also discriminate against fat people, because they’re lazy and I don’t want to look at them.
I do not discriminate on the basis of race or sex. I want good looking, sharply dressed, enthusiastic young people of any background in my team. If they happen to be female and gorgeous, all the better.
Once I was on holiday and in my absence they hired a 20 stone goth woman. Happily, she didn’t last long.
Your mistake is assuming that appearances don’t matter. They matter a lot! Most of life is acting. If you don’t look the part, you can’t play the part. Would you trust the Prime Minister if he turned up in Parliament dressed in a gorilla costume? Of course not.
What would customers think if they came to our office and were assailed by the sight of a freakish collection of oddballs and uglies? We’re running a business here, not a casting call for Star Wars.
The only people who I tolerate relaxing the rules for are IT guys. They’re mostly aspergers types so you can’t expect them to be presentable. And they live in the server room anyway, where they can’t spook my girls. Never go into the server room, it reeks of involuntary celibacy, Doritos and despair.
“If you decide not to interview a woman in a niqab just because eh is in a niqab you may be missing the best candidate.”
I had one of those a couple of years ago. It was quite a surprise when she came in to the room!
I wasn’t sure how that would have gone down on the sales floor. It’s a very politically incorrect environment with lots of banter and jokey innuendo flying about.
She wasn’t the best candidate though, not by a long chalk. So that one solved itself.
“But is it socially authoritarian? ”
Yes, the urge to punish or exclude people because of the way they dress is socially authoritarian. There is a constant push back of course, over time, and what seemed outlandish a generation ago (hair over the tops of his ears!) will seem mundane in the next? But what a waste of energy and talent in the meantime.
“Is that more authoritarian than, say, insisting that other people should be forced to employ you regardless of how you choose to present yourself, and regardless of how that chosen appearance might affect the employer’s customers and the image of their business?”
I suppose the obvious test there is legislation to prevent racial discrimination by employers or discrimination against gay men and women. How you feel about that will probably be a fairly good guide I reckon.
“Why prioritise ostentatious ear-stretching – a fairly frivolous expression of vanity and transient fashion – above something rather more important, like getting a job and earning a living?”
Because there is a moment in life for some people when they are young, impetuous, and not yet thinking about pleasing employers and climbing the corporate ladder? Maybe it would be better if they didn’t have to pay for that forever? maybe employers might find some of those people as good or better employees that the ultra-conformists who have dreamt of nothing but sitting on the finance committee since the age of 14?
“The true eccentric is now the individual happy to be ordinary and out of the limelight”- Peter Whittle, Look At Me- Celebrating the Self in Modern Britain
Minnow – “the urge to punish or exclude people because of the way they dress is socially authoritarian”
Hmm.
I see it as quality control.
A chap decides to get a bone through his nose, then expects me to hire him?
Quite apart from the aesthetic trauma of having to look at him every day, I’d be left wondering what else he might do? What if he decided to sacrifice a chicken on the photocopier? What if he chose to get devil horns implanted in his head? What if he was some sort of environmentalist nutter, and wanted us to turn off the heating in winter? Or complained about the Christmas party being offensive to Wiccans or something?
Sorry, it’s not going to happen. Not on my watch.
I suppose the obvious test there is legislation to prevent racial discrimination by employers or discrimination against gay men and women.
A typically sly conflation of quite different things.
Yes, the urge to punish or exclude people because of the way they dress is socially authoritarian.
You beg the question. I shouldn’t imagine many potential employers have time to spare indulging any theoretical urge to “punish” job applicants based on their lobe expanders (or neck tattoos or whatever). Most likely they’re just trying to find the most acceptable employee before a deadline or before they die of boredom. And if their definition of acceptable entails not looking like a fashion victim, then that’s just how it rolls. And yet if you poke through the Observer comments, you’ll find a number of people whose tacit assumption seems to be that everyone is entitled to a job – entitled to be hired – regardless of how they present themselves to an employer (and, perhaps, to her customers).
In practice, sifting through potential employees is often a chore and a risky endeavour. A significant chunk of time and money is being staked on the person who gets picked. Mr Elongated Lobes may think he looks fabulous but he’s entering a world – the job market – in which other people exist and have their own priorities – and who have to thin the pool of applicants one way or another. Mr Lobes’ bold fashion statement may well act against his ambitions, perhaps decisively. Given that reality – which you’d think most adults would comprehend – the question remains. Why make the chances of being employed slimmer? Is it wise, and is it something to reward?
I suppose the obvious test there is legislation to prevent racial discrimination by employers or discrimination against gay men and women. How you feel about that will probably be a fairly good guide I reckon.
Such legislation does not force employers to employ any given individual; it merely requires that they do not discriminate on the basis of certain criteria. Probably the only people who turn cartwheels with joy when presented with further statutory anti-discriminatory requirements which affect the workplace are HR types (“Whoopee- more empire building!”) and solicitors and barristers who specialise in that area. And if any future Employment Bill contains provisions relating to the mandatory discounting of Masaai earlobes, facial tattooing or extreme tongue modification when interviewing for a new receptionist then I believe we will have definitely fallen down the rabbit hole.
Which probably means I fail your ‘test’.
The obvious solution is for some enterprising individual to hire all these prominently qualified rouges and rapscallions and form the most awesomest corporate powerhouse operation, taking over all industry and finance.
Odd that given the copious supply of material this doesn’t happen. There’s been plenty of instructional material available free on TV and in the movies. Odd.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RagtagBunchOfMisfits
Of course even in the instructional material, some change is required. Perhaps that’s the key.
“A typically sly conflation of quite different things.”
They are different but similar enough to be enlightening.
“A chap decides to get a bone through his nose, then expects me to hire him?”
Not ‘expects’ so much as ‘wants’ I should think. And if you decide that you would rather choose your candidate based on the nose decoration rather than the ability of the candidate, you will eventually pay the price in poorer performance. That is the snobbery tax. It has been paid by British industry for decades.
Of course it’s possible that Mr Elongated Lobes is a good candidate for that accountancy job or vacancy at M&S, maybe better than the applicants whose ears are unremarkable, even dull. But in the world of mainstream job-hunting – where ostentatious body modification is rarely regarded as signalling enthusiastic competence – the person doing the sifting of applicants may not have the time or inclination to fathom this. Faced with several candidates that seem roughly equal in potential, visual clues may prove decisive. And after a day of staring at CVs, the person doing the shortlisting may look over the desk and see a guy who’s overly concerned with displaying his edginess, has made at least one rather obvious poor decision and as a result looks a bit of a tit.
Though if the job in question values edginess and tittery, well, huzzah.
There should be a quota system: at least, say, 7.5% of the workforce should have flesh tunnels.
That ought to counteract the British snobbery tax.
Minnow – And if you decide that you would rather choose your candidate based on the nose decoration rather than the ability of the candidate, you will eventually pay the price in poorer performance.
Well, by the time they get to me, most candidates (I’d guesstimate about 80% or 90%) are much of a muchness.
The other 10 or 20% are either outstanding and get me very excited, or they’re hopeless and make me wonder if HR are yanking my chain. Like one guy hoping to get a sales job who boasted to me – boasted, mind – that he just loves helping customers and could spend days sorting out their problems even if it wouldn’t earn him any money.
So in most cases there’s not much to choose between candidates. Therefore, why not filter out the ones who don’t look the part?
That is the snobbery tax. It has been paid by British industry for decades.
Compared to who? The Americans? The Germans? The Japs? In my experience their corporate culture is more conformist than ours. Where is this corporate wonderland where blue-haired, horned people with forked tongues are creating something of value?
I have, in my career (yeah it’s all anecdotal), selected for our own firm and we have collaborated in thousands of selection processes for clients. I want somebody to tick all the boxes. I have yet to have a friki (as they are known here), tick all the boxes. Lots of others haven’t either (more than all the frikis I have ever seen), but not a single friki has.
Rampant body odour (sorry, poor personal care), dirty clothes, and the one we have here, desire to visually shock has (obviously purely coincidentally) also coincided with; bad questions (what time do we go home?), lack of qualification, lousy timekeeping, lack of experience, poor communication skills, total lack of basic respect during interview, clear incapacity to do the job, an attitude problem (yes we can detect these things)… All these things are far more important than the frikiness, but, dammit, so often one or the other coincide with frikiness.
I must be unlucky, but I have never had a friki as the best candidate (I don’t rule out that I am a total scumbag and allowing my prejudices to get the better of me). As I tell my kids, there is a lot of competition out there and I am not in the business of giving the benefit of the doubt. I have yet to find a spec which says visible tattoos and piercing are fundamental or a plus. Could happen, but hasn’t yet. There are jobs where a mild frikiness is a plus. Generally I’m not involved; certain NGOs, social network companies…
As somebody said, in IT, sometines they tolerate frikis, but even then they (the people who pay our bills) prefer somebody who turns up smart casual and only calls attention to themselves due to the quality of their work. Scruffy is not friki incidentally. There are jobs where not being smart is no hassle.
If the friki ever turns out to be the best candidate (from the Guardian and Minnow’s info something much more common in the UK) I would, of course, present him or her to the client. Up to them to choose. I would also warn them about the ‘issue’ if I felt it was relevant to them.
BO on the farm might not be important, but in reception in a small office?
So what kind of people decide to get body modification anyways?
Well, according to one source:
Body modification is a subculture where individuals engage in body art practices which threaten the social order in their ‘celebration of grotesque’ and their ‘refusal of orderliness and social control’ (Pitt 2003, p. 41)
Hmm, ‘refusal of orderliness and social control’ – well that sounds like a surefire winner with a prospective employer. The source continues:
There are various discourses at play in the broader cultural understanding of body modification practices such as pathologisation, deviance, and ultimately depoliticisation via capitalist appropriation. Individuals who engage in these practices both employ and contest various dominant discourses.
Can’t possibly imagine why wearing those particular political opinions on your ears like that might count against someone trying to get a place on a graduate training scheme at KPMG.
You can’t expect to dismiss mainstream of society for being soulless wage slaves then turn round and complain that those same people keep you at arm’s length.
The young man either needs to de-modify his ears or start looking for jobs in places where that kind of body modification is seen as a bonus – say, a tattoo and piercing parlour.
” the person doing the sifting of applicants may not have the time or inclination to fathom this.”
That is true (with the emphasis heavily on the ‘inclination’) and, in fact, there is lots of research that shows interviewers tend to be looking for people as much as possible like themselves, even if only subconsciously. This is why legislation against racial and sexual discrimination is so important, not just for justice but because looking deeper and wider is actually better for business.
“So what kind of people decide to get body modification anyways?”
You mean apart from nearly all women? I would say mostly young people.
They are different but similar enough to be enlightening.
No, they are not.
Earlobe elongation, piercings, facial tattooing are all choices meant to signal something. They are a conscious choice to signal something. Race is not a choice and discrimation is rightly outlawed on the basis of race. You are conflating to build a straw man.
bilbaoboy – the 20 stone goth woman they hired when I was away?
She was meant to be a project manager.
Let me tell you the ways in which she was awful:
* She was a goth
* She was 20 stone, but dressed in tight black goth clothes
* Her fat face was caked in pale makeup, which was unpleasant to look at
* She had a terrible attitude – always complaining and arguing
* She was off sick at least once a fortnight
* She breathed like an obese bulldog
* She sucked the fun out of the office, like a fat cloud of misery, because she took offense at everything
* Customers hated her
Now, sure, not all frikis are like that. Maybe. But I suspect most of them are.
Our aspergery IT guys mainly have aspergery IT guy characteristics – poor personal grooming, visible ear hair, either an inability to look you in the eye or verbal diarrhoea about subjects nobody cares about, a certain painful thirstiness about them when they’re allowed near the girls in customer services, which creeps out the girls.
But half ton goth made them look like model professionals.
Minnow – interviewers tend to be looking for people as much as possible like themselves
Not true.
I am not a busty blonde, for example.
“Earlobe elongation, piercings, facial tattooing are all choices meant to signal something. They are a conscious choice to signal something. Race is not a choice and discrimination is rightly outlawed on the basis of race. You are conflating to build a straw man.”
I said they were similar not the same. And they are. Are you suggesting that if people chose to be not-white it would be legitimate to discriminate against them? Sounds a bit mad to me. And it makes me wonder what you would do about the Jews, because they could convert. Aren’t they Jews on purpose?
You mean apart from nearly all women? I would say mostly young people.
Sorry, can I refer to the story at the top of this thread – the one that concerns the young man that is actually under discussion?
“Nearly all women” (in the West, certainly) do not have ear piercings that look like this.
That is the topic of the discussion, not earrings or pierced ears.
“”Nearly all women” (in the West, certainly) do not have ear piercings that look like this.”
No, but they nearly all have body modifications. I don’t see on what basis you are deciding which are the right, permissible kind and which are the wrong kind, so it just looks like old fashioned prejudice.
Minnow – Are you suggesting that if people chose to be not-white it would be legitimate to discriminate against them?
Yes, it would be fine.
If somebody decided to get negroplasty I’d be happy to not let him marry my daughter.
“It’s a clue, I think, as to why British industry has struggled to cope in the modern era”
A clue is something you appear to be conspicuously lacking:
“Britain is expected to be the fastest growing major economy in the developed world this year, expanding at more than twice the pace of Germany and eight times the pace of France”
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2788541/european-stock-markets-tumble-fears-deepen-eurozone-s-woes-poor-global-economy-outlook.html
“This is the thing with social authoritarianism: it ends up biting you in the arse”
If you turned up for an interview at the Guardian wearing a UKIP t-shirt, you’d be lucky to get through the front gate, and their finances are a total shambles. So yeah, that seems to check out.
“If somebody decided to get negroplasty I’d be happy to not let him marry my daughter.”
I impressed that you have such an easily led daughter.
On the subject of body modification and negroplasty, my childhood heroes – Richard Rowntree, Mr. T, Darth Vader – were black.
I don’t want to be black, but I do feel a special affinity for cats.
They are beautiful, mysterious, independent, playful, and sleep 16 hours a day.
I would like to be a cat.
If they had kittyplasty, would I be justified in expecting my employers to supply me with a litter tray and somewhere warm to sleep, and perhaps a laser pointer to amuse me?
Would I be right to ask them and clients to address me as Chairman Miaow?
Would I be justified in expressing my displeasure at long meetings by hissing and then scratching Sharon from Accounts?
Minnow – I only have sons at the moment, but I’d get a daughter just so I could forbid her from marrying a guy who had negroplasty. Then I’d laugh and drink mineral water made from the righteous tears of the oppressed.
I said they were similar not the same. And they are. Are you suggesting that if people chose to be not-white it would be legitimate to discriminate against them? Sounds a bit mad to me. And it makes me wonder what you would do about the Jews, because they could convert. Aren’t they Jews on purpose?
That’s the whole point. The reason we don’t discriminate on the basis of race is because it is non-voluntary. You can’t choose to be non-white. That’s the whole point. Unless you’re thinking of Ali G, which isn’t the serious basis of an argument. The number of Jewish converts is small and Judaism is defined by matrilineal descent, so your example is not a good one.
Does getting things arseways round come naturally or do you practice?
Oh, Minnow, you are a card.
Here was my point:
A young man who adopts a particular look that demonstrates an anti-social attitude to the mainstream of society begins to wonder whether or not this might be what is having an adverse effect on his chances of getting a job with a company – a company, by it’s very name, being a social organisation regardless of what business it’s in. Adopting a fashion associated with anti-social attitudes may well be unhelpful.
Here, as far as I can tell, is what you appear to think is a rebuttal:
You must be a racist!!! Because … Well, dammit because, you just muse be one!!
As it happens, its fortunate for me that you referred to this prejudice as old fashioned because the crux of this discussion, I would say, is fashion.
Fashion, by it’s nature, communicates various things about the wearer. Having body modifications of that sort, ear plugs and so on, communicates a certain degree of contempt for the world of many employers through it’s association with a rejection of mainstream social values.
Would you, for example, register surprise or not if you were recruiting someone for a job in an office who came to the interview wearing jeans, trainers and a Hong Kong Phooey T-Shirt?
As I said previously, body-modification fashion is good in some contexts – a tattoo and piercing parlour for example – but it is potentially more problematic in other types of work places.
That’s fashion for you.
Minnow – interviewers tend to be looking for people as much as possible like themselves
Not even a generalisation, just an unjustified smear.
Wouldn’t last a week if I did that. And all the headhunters and personnel selection agenices and temporary work organisations are staffed by people far more professional than you seem to think. We can (and do) get it wrong. But there is slightly more objectivity than you would like to believe. Or maybe in the UK they are all crap. I do remember one brother going for an interview for a job he didn’t really want and the interviewer asked what car he aspired to. My brother didn’t drive but he said some long bonneted sports car and the interviewer made a comment about penis envy. My brother nearly pissed himself laughing, but obviously the interviewer was not a pro.
“That’s the whole point. The reason we don’t discriminate on the basis of race is because it is non-voluntary. ”
No it isn’t. As I pointed out, if it were voluntary it would still be wrong. or do you disagree? If it were possible for black people to (safely) ‘whiten’ themselves, should they be expected to to please employers?
“The number of Jewish converts is small and Judaism is defined by matrilineal descent, so your example is not a good one.”
Numbers are hardly the point, but what I was getting at is that Jews can choose to convert to non-Jews. I think you are arguing that since they can, it is reasonable to discriminate against those that choose not to.
“I don’t want to be black, but I do feel a special affinity for cats. They are beautiful, mysterious, independent, playful, and sleep 16 hours a day. I would like to be a cat. If they had kittyplasty …”
Fill your boots:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/dennis-avner-dead-cat-man-1435103
I wonder what chances a candidate would have at the Guardian if he let slip that he had a discreet tattoo of the English flag on his arm. None whatsoever I imagine, regardless of whether he was the best candidate or not.
Anyway, we are told we need quotas to ensure ‘fair’ representation of women, etc in industry (e.g. In boardrooms), regardless of whether they are the best for the job. On balance, I wonder what will cause the most lost productivity – compulsory women in boardrooms or not employing men with abnormally long self-stretched earlobes?
“Having body modifications of that sort, ear plugs and so on, communicates a certain degree of contempt for the world of many employers through it’s association with a rejection of mainstream social values.”
Are you sure? This isn’t true in my experience. Why not ask instead of making such broad generalisations. Perhaps in an interview? For a job. Not that ‘mainstream social values’ is a very clear category. Do you mean mainstream in Clacton or Hampstead?
Minnow – If it were possible for black people to (safely) ‘whiten’ themselves, should they be expected to to please employers?
No because it would look weird. They’d still have afro hair.
Sure they could dye their hair. But who wants to look at a ginger afro?
Thanks for the link on tiger man. Poor bugger. He didn’t even look like a tiger.
“No because it would look weird. They’d still have afro hair.”
You mean they would look Jewish?
http://tinyurl.com/l7wgmwo
Minnow – sort of, tho when I saw that picture my first thought was “twat” rather than “jew”.