Comments about physical appearance

[ziplock]

Do people who identify as women on this forum find that they get many unsolicited comments from faculty and students about their appearance, especially about weight and how they dress?

How do you deal with it? How do you respond?

[Parasaurolophus]

I'm not a woman, but I can tell you that the academic women in my life get comments about their appearance all the time, especially in student evaluations, but also sometimes in their letters of recommendation. Also their accents. From what I can tell, it's still rampant.

I'll leave it to your intended audience to offer actual advice, however.

[polly_mer]

Stop hanging out with students.

Hang out with more professional engineers who exemplify the joke of 'the extrovert looks at your shoes instead of their own'.

Seriously, the number of personal comments on appearance went way down when I left an academic setting with about half women for a non-academic setting that is about 10% women.

[adel9216]

Do people who identify as women on this forum find that they get many unsolicited comments from faculty and students about their appearance, especially about weight and how they dress?

How do you deal with it? How do you respond?

The thing I often hear about is students saying to WOC profs or young profs getting told "you do not look like a professor". It has not happened to me (yet), but I feel some pressure to dress in a certain way in order to be taken seriously when I will teach.

[WidgetWoman]

I work in a STEM field, and yes. It's not always directed towards me, and it's not always said to the target's face. A long time ago I realized I could either get mad or use it as an educational opportunity (for students). A quiet "in this class/lab/setting we are practicing our professional behavior" does a lot toward shooting things down.

[Ruralguy]

My wife got a lot of this when she was younger. Now she's a Dean, so teaches less, so evals are less of an issue,
and of course, since she can determine a students fate, and to some extent, a faculty members, they are much less likely to throw out a random comment about hotness or whatever, though the young men can be clueless and tell a woman of authority "you look very nice today" and think that's totally fine. Young women are less likely to do that, but might say "oh, cool shoes, I have a pair like that"  everyone comments on accents...it can be ridiculous. And it's not like the young folk from here are particularLy intelligible on a good day.

[mahagonny]

They're not hearing any from me. I'm very careful. But if I did let a comment slip out accidentally,  I could probably deflect the objection by pointing out that I have never specifically stated that I self-identify as male.

I did compliment a young African American lady on her beautiful hair recently, but not at work. She was ringing up my purchase at the supermarket. I might explain that she had the kind of hair (tiny braids with beads) that obviously took a lot of patient work to fix up, so I was, possibly, complimenting her on her taste and creativity, not her sex appeal. Whatever the message was, she appeared to be very pleased. It could also have been seen as benign since I wear a wedding band and I'm thirty years older, so I obviously wasn't hitting on her.

However, these were not my thought processes. My thought process was if we're going to maintain the male white supremacy thing, there's going to be work involved, so I'll do my share.

[Caracal]

My wife got a lot of this when she was younger. Now she's a Dean, so teaches less, so evals are less of an issue,
and of course, since she can determine a students fate, and to some extent, a faculty members, they are much less likely to throw out a random comment about hotness or whatever, though the young men can be clueless and tell a woman of authority "you look very nice today" and think that's totally fine. Young women are less likely to do that, but might say "oh, cool shoes, I have a pair like that"  everyone comments on accents...it can be ridiculous. And it's not like the young folk from here are particularLy intelligible on a good day.

I heard a long time ago that the basic rule is that when complimenting someone in a professional capacity you can say you like the thing they are wearing but you shouldn't say how they look in it. In general, I think that is a good way to not sound creepy or insulting. "I like that shirt" should be fine. "I like how you look in that shirt." Getting icky.

[ciao_yall]

I'm mildly legendary for my fashion sense at my institution, mainly because most other people dress casually while I like to look professional. I don't mind if people comment on my lewk.

I do get a little uncomfortable when overweight women comment on my shape. I'm average weight. I go to the gym. I have nice arms, if I do say so myself. Not Michelle Obama arms, but thanks to menopause I go sleeveless often enough that they get seen. Is this jealousy that is going to turn into a mean girl gang-up thing?

As a "lady of a certain age" I'm past the point that men get a little too interested, which is nice. Being married also helps keep that level of attention down.

[mamselle]

I'm always a tiny bit taken aback when I get compliments in Europe that I don't really hear here, anymore.

I agree, there's some odd point where a female may become invisible in the US, and I recall one summer, at least 10 or more years ago, when that seemed to be happening to me and to two other female friend (not all exactly the same age) and I realized people didn't look up when I entered a room, etc.

But it seems different in Europe...on my last trip I had at least 3 different conversations with guys where I suddenly realized (my antennae for this having become somewhat unused) they were getting a bit flirty...and not just casually so, the conversations were substantial ones, as well.

I've seen that before, too...once I had 2 guys in Italy both paying attention....and realized they were, again not just joking around, but serious.

I always feel a bit puzzled by that...I maybe do dress a bit more "European, " with a bright scarf and jewelry and so on, but there's seemingly a bit more to it than that.

Or maybe it's just a more genteel approach to people in general.

But there's definitely something different...not direct commentts or complimentss, per se, but more dimensional awareness of some kind.

M.

[mahagonny]

I'm not a woman, but I can tell you that the academic women in my life get comments about their appearance all the time, especially in student evaluations, but also sometimes in their letters of recommendation. Also their accents. From what I can tell, it's still rampant.

I'll leave it to your intended audience to offer actual advice, however.

Wow. Who writes these letters of recommendation?

[ziplock]

I'm not a woman, but I can tell you that the academic women in my life get comments about their appearance all the time, especially in student evaluations, but also sometimes in their letters of recommendation. Also their accents. From what I can tell, it's still rampant.

I'll leave it to your intended audience to offer actual advice, however.

I gave a talk once and was introduced by a senior professor in my field. I was really excited. Somewhere in his introduction, he said he had looked forward to my talk because he knew I would "prance in in a cute skirt like a breath of fresh air." It was humiliating. The women in the crowd gasped. The men thought it was absolutely delightful and came to tell me they liked my skirt after the talk. Just humiliating.

[pigou]

As a non-American white male, I get the accent comments occasionally -- but only in the US: Europeans think I'm American, so I don't think my accent is that strong. Also, quite often that I "don't look like a professor." I take that one as a compliment: I'm a first generation student and my view of professors was that they would be stuffy and formal. I'm generally the least formal person and my presentation (and teaching) style is information/conversational more so than what seems like a rehearsed/memorized talk.

I don't think the stereotypical professor (for people who are not in academia) is what any of us want to be.

[polly_mer]

I don't think the stereotypical professor (for people who are not in academia) is what any of us want to be.

I've only met one stuffy-stereotypical-per-the-movies professor in real life.  He was indeed a middle-aged white male who always wore a tweed jacket, had an office decorated in 1950's chic despite being in the 21st century, and had all the pretentiousness associated with being a philosopher.  He was renowned for failing students for plagiarism if even just four words in a paper were similar to something he could Google.

Professors may often be snappy dressers, but other stereotypes exist for valid, observable reasons, although humanities faculty only make up 11-12% of all faculty.  While folks may not want to be stereotypical humanities professors (for people who are not in academia), these fora have many people in that category for something other than garb.  Indeed, I sometimes have to take breaks from reading threads because of individuals conforming to the stereotypes of humanities professors being so present here as well as every academic institution at which I've ever worked.

What's interesting to observe is the contrast between a stated value of how diversity and inclusion matters and what actually happens when one dares to voice even just a mainstream (>30% per US national survey) opinion that doesn't accord with one of the standard stereotypical humanities academic views, let alone be actually different based on expertise not available to the stereotypical humanities faculty member.  I'm still amused by the assertion that what we want to do to be safer in our communities is legally require that people stop clinging to 19th century technology and techniques instead of doing everything possible to encourage those ideas so the people with truly bad intentions will choose poorly from all the techniques available to them.  I'm also intrigued by the logic fail in asserting we can't trust the government including the police do to what's right, but ensuring that only the government has the technology to enforce their will on the general population.

Thus, while I know many academics in various fields who are not stereotypical (humanities) professors, personal experience reinforces that the stereotype for the humanities professors exists for a reason.  Geologists don't tend to fall into stereotypical (humanities) professor behavior.  Engineering professors don't tend to do that.  But, humanities professors do tend to follow stereotypes frequently enough that the stereotypes are useful for the group, even if individuals may vary.

[mahagonny]

As a non-American white male, I get the accent comments occasionally -- but only in the US: Europeans think I'm American, so I don't think my accent is that strong. Also, quite often that I "don't look like a professor." I take that one as a compliment: I'm a first generation student and my view of professors was that they would be stuffy and formal. I'm generally the least formal person and my presentation (and teaching) style is information/conversational more so than what seems like a rehearsed/memorized talk.

I don't think the stereotypical professor (for people who are not in academia) is what any of us want to be.

I'd like his income.