White Coat Ceremony 3 (Photo credit: pennstatenews)

White Coat Ceremony 2 (Photo credit: pennstatenews)

We already know that dressing appropriately for work is usually part of the condition of many of the jobs out there. Dressing inappropriately could result in not getting that job, getting fired for it, or even just giving the wrong impression.

Uniformed jobs have it the easiest, let’s face it that removal of choice makes it a hell of a lot easier to get out of the house in the morning. Men too have it easy. In office jobs men tend to wear suits, or in more ‘modern’ or relaxed environments, casual shirts can suffice. Oh no! someone came in for a short notice meeting? It’s ok I can stick a suit jacket over these tailored jeans and shirt and (given the work environment rules) hey presto, I’m business presentable again! Let’s face it if you work in an only suit and tie environment, this is not really a problem for you either as your lack of choice lets you blend with the rest of the suits, and let your performance stand out.

Women on the other hand seem to have more pitfalls in this area, in jobs where we are not required to wear uniforms. Sure, we have more choice overall, skirts gave way to trousers and now we have a plethora of attire to choose from for whatever work environment we are in. I personally like the choice of heels vs flats, jeans vs skirt but realise that there will be occasions I need to be suited and booted like the rest and as long as I can plan which days these are, tend not to have issues with wearing the ‘wrong thing’ for the day. However, I work in digital, which is a pretty relaxed environment for clothing and a lot of my clients don’t have it so lucky as while I can go to meetings slightly more smart casual or relaxed business style, while they are suited up. That is, if you consider dressing down as lucky, and not the reverse of course.

The point here is really not so much about personal taste, but how often do you feel better or worse depending on how you are dressed? We’ve all got it wrong at some point or another and felt horribly over or under dressed for the rest of the day or evening event. Now while I like the saying you can never be too overdressed or overeducated, there are occasions you should blend in!

This feeds directly into an interesting study that was done at the Kellogg Schoold of Management at the Northwestern Iniversity in America where they produced a paper called “Enclothed Cognition” which discussed the term “embodied cognition” essentially referring to how we feel bodily sensations can affect how we think and feel.  They studied subjects who wore similar white coats with half the group told they were wearing medical white coats, the rest artist’s white coats. The group who perceived they were wearing the medical coats performed better on the ‘stroop’ test than the artist coats, even though they were only different in perception.

Now this research paper does not directly move to discuss professional dress in other arenas, but the results are markedly interesting and should be tested in other industries. It is interesting that often how we are instructed to dress for work is to present a unified, business perception to those outside the organisation, but perhaps this is the wrong motivation. Similarly, dressing down is a sign of a relaxed ‘fun’ and often modern place to work, but again, is this meaning we are too relaxed and therefore paying less attention?

This is not to say that you are suddenly crap at your job on your dress down Fridays, but it does mean we should as organisations be paying more attention to the psychology behind our workplace dress codes. As individuals also, it is something we should pay more attention to than we most likely do. I am guilty of this. Sure, women need to be more careful than men in terms of dressing too provocatively to be giving the wrong impression, not just of being slutty, but possibly of being incompetent or an airhead, when in actual fact you might just have beauty AND brains (go you). It has been said that women get taken more seriously in business when they dress more masculine, however I’m curious how many women feel they had the advantage in a job interview because they are pretty, or dressed to show it off?

We don’t have the answers, but we should ask the questions until we get the research to hand. In the meantime, even though it’s the last thing we really want to think about first thing in the morning, we should probably think a bit more about what we are wearing each day, not just for the outside world, but if you feel good, you will most likely do a better job.

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-leadership/post/new-study-what-you-wear-could-affect-how-well-you-work/2011/04/01/gIQAssHomR_blog.html

https://www.citibank.com/womenandco/article/how-your-work-wardrobe-could-impact-your-performance.jsp

http://woman.thenest.com/wear-affect-communication-job-7984.html

http://work.chron.com/wear-affect-communication-job-15923.html

http://careers.yourmoney.ca/2012/05/what-you-wear-could-affect-how-well-you-work.html

Related articles

• What to wear to work in the PR and marketing industry (prdaily.com)
• Dress to Impress (fsu.uloop.com)
• Ideas for What to Wear When You Have “Nothing to Wear”. (kate152william.wordpress.com)

Only last week saw an Indian millionaire, now living in Mexico, take out a full page ad in The Times of India to seek a wife. Now in some cultures, matrimonial listings and arrangements are made all the time in some aspects as a business arrangement rather than a love declaration (although I’m not saying you can’t have both) and it is a very respectable tradition in India to arrange children’s marriages, but what was particularly interesting here was his honesty.

This man has a private airplane, several cars, a huge mansion, amongst many other luxuries including a superbike collection and a penchant for riding them at 130kms+, and is not afraid to talk about it. Dinshah Vimadalal is a retired travel agency tycoon whose wife died a few years ago in a car accident, and it seems wealth has not been able to fill the void she left behind. Aged 69, he is seeking a woman no older than 40 as he claims to have an incredibly active lifestyle that no woman older than 40 would be able to keep up with in an acceptable fashion.

The ad was titled “He is a great guy – wish to marry him?” and read;

“You must speak English and have done your basic schooling. I don’t care how much money you have or don’t have…you should have a sense of adventure and the desire to live and exciting life… be no older than 40 and slim. And please don’t be a vegetarian. If you are divorced, it doesn’t matter, but definitely no children. I am much older than 40 but am very young at heart, very young physically, very active and any girl older than 40 would have a tough time keeping up with my active lifestyle.”

Now he may seem fussy, but I think it’s fair play to someone who is almost 70 and putting himself out there, not beating around the bush, just stating the facts of what he is looking for. I’ve seen  comments around this criticising him for not thinking of the other person in this and selfishly looking to please himself, but let’s face it, at 70 he’s probably got every right. Even if he is being selfish, he’s being honest, and that’s worth a lot. Whoever ends up with him knows exactly what she’s letting himself in for, and should that really be a problem considering a lot of gold diggers out there who don’t like to admit they are attracted to the money a hell of a lot more than the person. (Again, I am generalising but understand there are exceptions to this.)

Aged almost 70 Vimadalal has tried the internet, and searched across America, Mexico but said he found a “bunch of idiots” which is why he decided to look to Mumbai.

In a statement to The Telegraph in the UK, Mr Vimadalal said he found a few people but no one special;

“Two or three were very sweet, nice people, but I place a lot of emphasis on the figure. I don’t mind if the face is not pretty, but I like a nice slim figure, and the girls who have been very nice had big fat bottoms. I don’t like that.”

When asked if he thought he would be successful in his search, he replied, “I’m pessimistic”.

I think that’s great. It reminds me of the poem by Jenny Joseph, ‘When I am  an Old Woman I shall Wear Purple”. Why shouldn’t he be picky and why should he have to hide it? Why should he sit alone and wish he wasn’t so lonely? Let him use his money to find happiness as while it can’t buy it, it can certainly open some doors and make the search a bit more cushioned.

Whatever he does, and whoever he finds, I think the honesty here is refreshing. I wish many of us today would stop playing the ridiculous games that seem to go along with relationships of many kinds, and the ‘rules of dating’ garbage that we are all supposed to follow or we are social outcasts, stalker men or needy women at home with a host of cats. Take a leaf out of this man’s book and whatever you are looking for in life with whatever parameters you put around it, put yourself out there, be honest with the other person and embrace the consequences. No crap needed.

Now, I’m off to listen to Freddie Mercury’s ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’….

Sources:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/wanted-wife-for-tycoon-must-not-have-fat-bottom-20130404-2h84x.html

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mexico-based-travel-agency-tycoon-dinshah-vimadalal-comes-to-india-marriage-india-today/1/260753.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9969397/Indian-millionaire-takes-out-advert-looking-for-slim-childless-meat-eating-wife.html

http://timesfeed.com/India/this-indian-millionaire-is-looking-for-slim-childless-meat-eating-wife/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303552/Dinshah-Vimadalal-places-15-000-ad-new-wife.html

Related articles

• Indian millionaire takes out advert looking for ‘slim, childless, meat-eating wife’ (telegraph.co.uk)

Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, were found guilty of raping a drunk 16-year-old girl during a series of end-of-summer parties in August 2012.

Of course, the defence team mounted their case by victim blaming, the usual way out for cases like this.

Maybe the girl wanted it! Maybe it was actually consensual. Can the victim and her team prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was forced, that it was not consensual?

But honestly, to me the more shocking thing here is CNNs utter bias. Here is a channel that supposedly reports unbiased, journalistic news.

The stance the channel takes in is that the boys were star students and star football players with such promising futures that have now been “destroyed” because of this “tragic event” that has ruined their lives. It doesn’t talk about the victim, nor the justice being served, nor the sickness or details of the crime that warrants this verdict. It doesn’t indicate any confidence in the justice system, just that these poor boys must now be labelled rapists for the rest of their lives. How unfair. All they did was a little itty bitty raping, after all.

Please watch the video below and you’ll see what I mean:

“These two young men who had such promising futures — star football players, very good students — literally watched as they believed their life fell apart.”

–Poppy Harlow,  CNN.

This is an unbelievable cavalier attitude about rape, especially for a public news broadcaster to present to the masses.

Here are the facts: there were witnesses, countless text messages, Tweets, gossip and chatter about the parties after the night. There was joking about how the girl was so drunk she was “like a dead body”. There are quotes and texts stating that the boys took advantage because they “wanted some sexual attention”.

Some friends even dubbed “Rape Me” by Nirvana, the theme-song of the night.

So for a case that seems so utterly publicised and thus close-book, why are the criminals the one who get CNN’s sympathy? Is it because they are 17 years old and were drunk that night too?

Sorry, but when I was seventeen, I knew better. When I was a teenager if I saw a girl passed out a party, regardless of whether I myself were drunk, I would have helped her get home, not rape her. It’s not like 17 is so young you don’t know what morality, criminal behaviour or respect for women is yet.

Two young men see their classmate passed out and decide to rape her, revive her, staggeringly take her to various parties where they photograph her while doing various things to her, including urinating on her. They then posted these photos onto Twitter, all the while thinking it was a great joke.

Drunk or not, what they did was cruel and calculated and shows a complete lack of respect and lack of morality.

These boys should pay for this crime for the rest of their lives. Because we know this girl will.

CNN seem to have missed that fact completely.

Related articles

• Steubenville, Victim-Blaming, and Solutions to Rape (aauw.org)
• Media Joins Victim-Blaming Culture After Steubenville Verdict (bilerico.com)
• Why You Should Care About Steubinville, Ohio (filthysocialist.wordpress.com)
• My guide for victim-blamers. (thenotsoquietfeminist.wordpress.com)
• Media, rape culture, victim blaming and Stuebenville (jamietie.com)
• Victim Blaming: A Global Problem (mundaneadventurer.wordpress.com)
• [link] I Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter. I Am A Person. (feimineach.com)
• CNN’s Not the Only One Peddling Sympathy for the Steubenville Rapists (theatlanticwire.com)
• Steubenville and the misplaced sympathy for Jane Doe’s rapists | Megan Carpentier (guardian.co.uk)
• Instead of Apologizing CNN Is Outraged By the Backlash Over Their Pro-Rapist Coverage (politicususa.com)

This should come as a disgusting reminder that although you think if you appeal enough, eventually common sense and decency will kick in, you’re wrong. Money and power is what wins you more money and more power, not fairness.

Because 24 songs, which sells for $1-$2, really is worth $222,000 if you happen to be sharing them on the Internet (making it possible for others to even partially download them from you).

The Verge reports:

When the case was brought, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group representing the top labels were preparing to end years of litigation against file sharers. Thomas-Rasset was the first person to refuse to settle with the RIAA and argue her case before a jury. The cost of settling back then? $3,500. On Monday, Thomas-Rasset and her lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

An RIAA spokeswoman said in a statement: “We appreciate the Court’s decision and are pleased that the legal case is finally over. We’ve been willing to settle this case from day one and remain willing to do so.”

Thomas-Rasset went before two different juries and in each case they hammered her. In her first trial, the jury ordered her to pay the labels $222,000. That decision was tossed by the judge, and the case was retried. In the second trial, the jury ordered Thomas-Rasset to pay $1.9 million. The district judge in the case called the award “monstrous,” and reduced the award. But the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s reduction and returned the award to the original $222,000.

(Source: Supreme court denies appeal of woman who owes RIAA $222,000 | The Verge)

Importantly, the days of suing individuals for filesharing are over. It is still technically illegal to download and upload music, but it’s not such a massive deal anymore, because well, record labels have stopped chucking hissy fits and tantrums and realised it’s not all that big a chunk of their revenue after all. In fact, it’s negligible, not worth the cost of pursuing. In fact, record labels have better profits than ever, having finally fully embraced the digital age and turning to countless online models from iTunes to YouTube to Pandora instead of trying to sue everything into obscurity that attempts to use music.

These new services offer convenience and lower prices to music lovers, while, ironically, the price of an album on iTunes has sky-rocketed from what it once was (around $7.99) to beyond what you’d pay for a hard copy CD in stores (around $24, which I find utterly ridiculous). People fools are paying for it, too, and the record labels are happily lining their coffers.

All of this compliance and widespread acceptance has seen pirating drop from its all-time high negligible percentage to its current sub-sub negligible percentage.

The effect this record company relief has had on the RIAA is a sharp reduction in membership, as TorrentFreak.com reported In August 2012:

The latest RIAA tax filing shows that the revenue generated by the anti-piracy group has reached a new low. In just two years the membership dues from music labels have been cut in half and have now sunk to below $30 million a year. While the group has 72 employees, payouts to the top two executives including CEO Cary Sherman amount to more than $3 million, some 25% of the total wage bill.

The RIAA has submitted its latest tax filing to the IRS, covering the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011.

Despite the long reporting delay, the figures are well worth a look as they show a massive decline in revenue for the music group. In just two years the RIAA’s entire budget was almost cut in half.

The total revenue in the latest filing is $29.1 million, down from $51.35 million two years earlier. This drop in revenue is a direct result of the dwindling membership dues paid by music labels, from $49.76 million to $27.88 million in the same period.

The effects of the decline in revenue are also visible in the massive cuts in personnel.

This explains why the RIAA has ceased pursuing expensive lawsuits against every Jammie Thomas-Rasset that dared to partake in illegal music uploading. It’s just too bad that all of this present-day common sense and digital contentedness doesn’t apply to our poor  Joan of Arc of Filesharing.

Related articles

• Supreme court denies appeal of woman who owes RIAA $222,000 (theverge.com)
• First RIAA piracy lawsuit ends with supreme court refusal (electronista.com)
• Supreme Court won’t hear Jammie Thomas’ file-sharing case (news.cnet.com)
• U.S. Supreme Court passes on Thomas-Rasset Case (randazza.wordpress.com)
• Supreme Court won’t hear Jammie Thomas’ file-sharing case (oddonion.com)
• File-Sharer Loses SCOTUS Appeal, Tells RIAA “No Way I Can Pay” (zeropaid.com)
• Supreme Court rejects Minnesota woman’s music-sharing case (sacbee.com)
• Supreme Court OKs $222,000 Verdict for File-Sharing Two Dozen Songs (wired.com)
• Supreme Court upholds $220,000 fine for music piracy (rawstory.com)
• Supreme Court Lets $222,000 Verdict In File-Sharing Case Stand (wnyc.org)

Jimmy Savile presenting “Top of The Pops” in 1964. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For those of you who don’t know who Jimmy Savile was, he was a DJ, TV presenter of Top of the Pops for 20 years, and Jim’ll Fix It  as well as known for his charity work and hospital support.

He was a highly intelligent member of mensa, was commended by Prince Charles, and he was given an OBE and knighted by the Queen. I remember watching his eccentric, white mullet haired, track suited, gold jewellery laden frame on Saturday TV as a kid. He looked a bit creepy, but everyone put it down to his eccentricities.

He was also a prolific paedofile who was not publically outed until a year after his death in 2011 aged 84.

Jimmy Savile – circa 1960

Why did this take so long considering 5 decades of abuse had gone unpunished? I didn’t say unreported because this was reported, but as it was often by children, against a well known celebrity philanthropist, it was brushed under the carpet by those who should have been  outing it – Police and BBC employers alike.

The report of the investigations undertaken jointly by the police and the NSPCC, Giving Victims a Voice, was published on 11 January 2013. It reported (but did not attempt to prove) allegations covering a period of fifty years, including 214 alleged crimes by Savile, some involving children as young as eight, and including 34 claims of rape or penetration. Offences allegedly took place at 13 hospitals as well as on BBC premises.^[6]

[Source Wikipedia]

It could have been because he was a celebrity, or the reports of abuse were coming from children in an age where children were arguably less listened to, or because he couldn’t possibly be doing those evil things while he was so philanthropically involved.

Still begs the question why something didn’t break the cycle earlier.

His abuse took place ranging from the TV sets, to hospitals he was visiting, from strangers to family members.

Singer Coleen Nolan said Savile invited her to a hotel when she was 14 and had been involved in a TV recording at the Top of the Pops studio and that it made her “uncomfortable”, “But you didn’t talk about those things then.”^[39] Savile’s great-niece Caroline Robinson said she had been sexually abused by him twice at family gatherings. She believed some members of the family knew about his abuse but had turned a blind eye to it.^[40]

[Source Wikipedia]

Someone surely could have shouted louder than they did, or were we all really that blind?

Claims were made about Savile’s activities in hospitals. It was claimed that he sexually abused a 13-year-old patient during a visit to Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1971 and an eight-year-old girl in the same hospital recovering from an operation.^[30] Staff reported he searched the wards for young patients to abuse and they instructed patients in the children’s ward to feign sleep during his visits.^[31] A hospital spokesman said, though it was working with the police, it had no record of inappropriate behaviour by Savile.^[32] A former nurse said she saw Savile molest a brain-damaged patient at Leeds hospital, saying, “He kissed her, and I thought he was a visitor coming to see her, and he started rubbing his hands down her arms and then I don’t know of a nice way to put it but he molested her.”^[33]

…Savile was a volunteer at the adult high-security psychiatric Broadmoor Hospital, and in August 1988 was appointed to chair an interim task force overseeing the management of the hospital, after its management board had been suspended.^[34] It is alleged that Savile had hospital keys and access to patients’ rooms. In a separate allegation, a lawyer said a client had been abused by Savile when he was a 10-year-old at the Haut de la Garenne children’s home in Jersey.^[35]… Savile’s former colleagues said he made no attempt to hide his interest in girls from them, while another said she had walked in on him french kissing an underage girl. One woman who said Savile had sexually assaulted her when she was 14 in 1970 explained she had not pursued her complaint to police in 2008 after being told it would lead to a “media circus“.^[25] The founder of ChildLine, Esther Rantzen, was shown the interviews by Williams-Thomas and commented that “There were always rumours that he [Savile] behaved very inappropriately sexually with children.”^[26]

[Source: Wikipedia]

I could rant and paraphrase, but really the report speaks volumes about the unbelievable cover ups that occured in the Police force for the sake of celebrity and charity work. He was even linked to a child sex ring the year he started presenting Top of the Pops.

A male victim who came forward in 1963 to claim Savile raped him was told by police to “forget about it”.

A police intelligence file linked the notorious ­paedophile to a child sex ring in 1964 but it was overlooked until last year.

[Source: Mirror]

Here is what the report itself that was released today had to say:

Numerous police failings left Jimmy Savile free to sexually abuse hundreds of young people over five decades – when he could have been stopped in the 1960s, according to a highly critical report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC).

The watchdog’s inquiry into police handling of Savile revealed that the disgraced DJ, who died in October 2011, could have been stopped as early as 1964 but police mishandled evidence and dismissed victims. In a 61-page report to the home secretary, Theresa May, HMIC raised fresh concerns about information sharing in the police and warned that officers could fail to prevent a Savile-like scandal happening again.The inspectorate described a “cultural mistrust” of evidence from children, warning that procedures adopted by various agencies over many years had left vulnerable young people unprotected by the criminal justice system.

“The findings in this report are of deep concern, and clearly there were mistakes in how the police handled the allegations made against Savile during his lifetime,” said Drusilla Sharpling of HMIC. “However, an equally profound problem is that victims felt unable to come forward and report crimes of sexual abuse.”

Five allegations of sexual assault were recorded against Savile in his lifetime, according to HMIC – compared with the 600 made since October last year when the Metropolitan police launched its Operation Yewtree investigation…In 1963, a Cheshire man was told by a police officer to “forget about it” and “move on” when he reported an allegation of rape by Savile, according to HMIC. Another man who tried to report an assault his girlfriend had suffered at a recording of Top of the Pops was told by police he “could be arrested for making such allegations” and dismissed…HMIC said it was sufficiently concerned that it will review information management in the police later this year – just two years after the Police National Database (PND) was set up.

Referring to Michael Bichard’s recommendations to reform intelligence sharing in 2004, the HMIC report said: “It is a matter of some concern that, in 2007, in the post-Bichard era, the failures of the past may still have been repeated.” Evidence uncovered by HMIC suggests Savile was known to Met officers investigating child sex offences as early as 1964 – the same year he presented the first edition of Top of the Pops. The inquiry also turned up an anonymous letter received by the Metropolitan police in 1998, which it said was “never properly investigated”, despite suggesting that Savile changed his telephone number as a result of a blackmail attempt.

HMIC’s report also raises further questions for West Yorkshire police, which said in February that some officers regularly visited Savile’s Leeds home while on duty. Two former West Yorkshire police officers and a relative of an officer have come forward to state they were aware of concerns surrounding Savile’s contact with young girls, the report said. As the force for the area where Savile lived throughout his life, West Yorkshire should have received three key pieces of intelligence, according to HMIC, but has only been able to confirm receipt of a letter from the Met in 1998.

Related articles

• Savile claims ignored for 50 years (bigpondnews.com)
• Police scathed in Savile abuse report (bigpondnews.com)
• Police ‘could have stopped Jimmy Savile’ as far back as 1964 (metro.co.uk)
• Police, prosecutors and hospitals: How Jimmy Savile’s victims were let down by every authority (itv.com)
• Police blasted for ignoring claims (standard.co.uk)
• “Forget about it”: What police told Jimmy Savile rape victim as vital evidence ignored for 50 years (mirror.co.uk)
• The letter to police that could have stopped Savile in 1998 (itv.com)
• National News: Jimmy Savile: Police under fire as report claims presenter could have been stopped in 1964 (coventrytelegraph.net)
• UK News: Jimmy Savile: Police under fire as report claims presenter could have been stopped in 1964 (walesonline.co.uk)
• Jimmy Savile: Police failed to join the dots, HMIC report concludes (telegraph.co.uk)