“Women lawyers and judges wear suits, including dresses with jackets, for work,” wrote DC lawyer Leslie McAdoo Gordon. “It’s not a great look that ACB still doesn’t have. No male judge would wear less than proper court attire. It’s too casual. “
Lawyers and judges quickly pushed back to express their frustration that the discussion of a woman in public life had turned to her clothes once again.
“Basically all professional women I know (including myself) are very worried about what they wear to work” Carissa Byrne Hessick tweeted, professor of criminal law at the University of North Carolina. “Crap catches like this are one of the main reasons.”
“Who cares what she’s wearing?” wrote Mary Ziegler, professor of law at Florida State University. “If she wore a Halloween costume or walked naked, that wouldn’t change: Amy Coney Barrett is very accomplished. … If you care about what she is wearing, please have a chat with yourself ”
Arkansas Supreme Court Judge Rhonda Wood pleaded with people to stop making rules about what judges should look like and highlighted that the clothing choices of female jurists are delicate.
“Can we all try to be kind and generous and realize that there are many factors that involve choice?” Wood wrote. “Let’s try to be nice”
Objection to Barrett’s attire represents a common way of discussing women in the public sphere, experts say: superficial judgments about whether their clothing choices are good or bad, instead of deeper conversations about how they – and their male colleagues – could use fashion to convey a message, push an agenda or frame their image.
Pamela Stone, professor of sociology at Hunter College, said this is happening in part because women are newer in respected fields like law. Although a suit and tie forms a sort of uniform for white-collar men, she said there is no firmly agreed upon equivalent for women.
For now, Stone has said that a woman who chooses not to wear a suit in a work situation should be aware that other people may debate that decision.
“It’s a signal of how precarious women are in the profession, their new child on bloc status, that what they wear is going to be looked at this way,” said Stone, who is also the author of ” Opting Back In: What Really Happens When Mothers Return to Work. “” And therefore deviations from what has been tried and true will unfortunately prompt this kind of comment, which is a distraction.
Kendall Funk, professor of political science at Arizona State University, said that because men created the country’s political institutions, they set the standards for what is considered professional attire. Clothing that deviates from these standards is often deemed inappropriate, she said, while a woman wearing a suit and tie, like most men, is likely to be viewed as too masculine and therefore unprofessional.
“Professional women are constantly trying to find the right balance between looking too masculine or too feminine and finding ‘professional’ clothing that matches their unique body type,” Funk said in an email.
But Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, professor of women’s and gender history at Case Western University, said there are ways to discuss the fashion choices of female and male public figures that are much more illuminating than how these conversations tend to unfold.
“It needs to be part of a larger conversation and not the only one,” Rabinovitch-Fox said. “The conversation needs to be framed: how does she use the clothes? Does it present itself in a certain way that conveys certain messages?
In Barrett’s case, Rabinovitch-Fox said the dress she wore on the first day of her confirmation hearing could suggest that she emphasized her femininity and that the magenta color could be a statement of her independence. compared to people’s expectations – a feeling she has repeatedly. voiced this week.
Rabinovitch-Fox said criticism of Barrett’s choice not to wear a jacket illustrates the dilemma of whether a woman who appears feminine will always be seen as professional.
“I think it’s a very fine line that a lot of women face every day,” she said. “I don’t think there is a single correct answer to that.”
