The Career Centre at the University of California Irvine sparked controversy on Monday when it sent out an email entitled “How to Ace That Job Interview”.
While the words contained in the message body were inoffensive, one of the pictures used left many female students outraged.
The image showed an Asian woman “before” and “after” an apparent job interview makeover.
The “after” image advises job-seeking women to don a full face of makeup, a “feminine top”, a tailored skirt and “leg-lengthening” heels to give themselves the best chance of getting a job.
Trousers, flat shoes, a bare face and a “boxy button-up” shirt are all frowned upon and presented as the quickest way to ensure you don’t succeed.
Countless appalled students forwarded the email to feminist blog Jezebel, who quickly discovered the university had stolen the image from a Boston blogger named Jean.
Jean had created the image two years ago for her blog Extra Petite – which gives fashion advice to short women working in corporate environments – after a reader wrote in to ask for tips on how to gain confidence and feel “less like a kid” in the office.
Jean was horrified her image has been misappropriated by the university and felt her message was completely lost in the email.
She says she was not trying to say pants and flat shoes should be banned, but rather that all clothes should fit properly.
“To illustrate my point, I used the only two pieces I could scrounge up at home that did not fit, which happened to be an old button up blouse and pants,” she told Jezebel.
“I used flats to emphasise my point about fit because too-long pants dragging on the floor is not professional. It very well could’ve been an ill-fitting dress, skirt, etc., but the principal of looking neat and tidy remains the same.”
“It’s harder for that to come through when the image is taken out of context, as my post explains that what fits well and what generates confidence is not the same for different individual and different body types.”
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