Photo by Ashley Jurius on Unsplash
The event was already off to a rough start. Even though I had meticulously ordered from the venue so that the wide variety of dietary issues could be met WITHIN the budget, someone had decided to make some changes and now I had hungry vegans on my hands. But as a veteran of running events I was used to these sorts of day-of fires and after consulting the owner had everything in hand. The day was important to me. I had reached a point in my career where my resume didn’t reflect what I was capable of doing, what I was doing regularly. I need to be able to add some credentials that reflected my worth.
So, when the Evanston Chamber of Commerce put out a call for committee members for the Women in Business Lunches, I gladly signed up. I had attended several lunches and saw the need for a little more organization, a little more foresight. The first few meetings were excruciating. A revolving door of new committee members showed up each time only to realize that the work to fun ratio wasn’t what they were expecting. At some point I became the only constant and spent each meeting recapping to the new members what had already been decided. So, after agreeing to host the May meeting, I planned to make a graceful exit. I focused my energy on creating an event I would be proud of and could proudly add to the resume before going back to “normal life”.
I attempted to leverage our proximity to Northwestern University, contacted multiple faculties members about putting together a lecture on how women unconsciously police their language and what we could do to change it. Sadly, no one felt like an expert on the subject. Eventually I was put into contact with Lynne Franklin and we created an interactive set that I thought would be great. With local restaurant Bat 17 on board, part of a strategy to warm them up for possible donations for future fundraisers for my nonprofit employer, we were set.
The hungry vegans aside, the event was going well. Lynne was teaching us how we could change any question we got into an answer that we wanted to give, and I thought people were enjoying themselves. I was starting to make that mental transition from host to participant when he walked up. The only man in the room, he was the brand-new assistant to the President of the Evanston Chamber of Commerce and was there to assist with registrations at the door and such. Other than a cursory “hi hello” when I first walked through the door, I had been too busy managing the event to connect with him. But this man would end up leaving an impression that still bothers me to this day. There are times that I wish I could erase what he said from my memory.
“My goodness! What horrible thing did he say?” you must be thinking. Another lesson in how ordinary words can hurt when uttered by the well-meaning. “I’ve taken several pictures of the event for us to put on Facebook,” he whispered in my ear as he interrupts my partner and I practicing of our new skills. “How wonderful” I exclaimed before turning back. He continued to hover. It took a moment before I turned back to him, confused about what more he needed from me. “I’m not sure I should post all of them. They might not be appropriate. You are showing a lot of leg.” By reflex I looked down at my lap confused, maybe thinking that something had hiked up without me realizing. But my dress was in place and my legs were still my legs. “Would you like me to show you the pictures so you can decide if you want them deleted?” In somewhat of a daze I nodded. He held up his digital camera that was out of date for 2017 and showed me picture after picture of women seated at high tables chatting. I waited to see something horrifying and never did. “They’re fine,” I stated. “Are you sure?” “Yes, please post them all on Facebook right away.” He finally left.
I tried to return my attention to my partner. I tried to fully engage with all the networking happening around me. With the congratulations on a successful event. I was happy when the owner, pleased at all the new business he expected from the packed event told me not to worry, that he would have his staff straighten everything up. I drove back to work in a bit of a daze, luckily, I didn’t have far to go. I wasn’t quite ready to sit at my desk and plug myself into the computer and check my email as if everything was fine. I noticed our professional students using the gym and took a detour to spend a few minutes watching their progress. A friendly bunch they greeted me as I walked through the door. And then one of them, hanging from the ceiling, rang out “why are you so dress up” and the rage that I had been trying to suppress exploded from my body. I told them about the horrid man and my legs which I was now looking at as if they had betrayed me. The women in the room, versed in these situations in their own lives responded with disgust and swiftly came to my defense. But that old and dirty friend doubt had already wormed itself in. I hadn’t been sitting very ladylike, no crossed legs. I had crossed my legs at the ankle, letting my legs splay out a bit. And I was sitting at a rather tall table, maybe the angle had made things indiscreet and I had been too stupid to realize? I sat in one of our chairs to recreate to check myself.
It was one of the men in the room who helped to undo some of the damage of the first man. A little confused he asked, “wait, have you changed?” “what do you mean?” “have you changed outfits? Were you wearing something else?” “No, this is the dress.” “THIS is the dress? Wait, what? I thought you had to be wearing something shorter. That’s just a dress. Those are your legs. I don’t understand?” Like that my doubt was whisked away. Yes, this is a dress. A dress that my mother bought for me. One that I had worn to a wedding. One that I had worn to several professional and important occasions. And these were my legs. Legs that walked me around my beautiful neighborhood. That helped me climb the ladders around our gym to move around merchandise, to rearrange equipment before open houses, that carried me through life.
What saved me was our student’s complete confusion on how the heck someone had judged my body as inappropriate. This was new to him but terribly familiar to the women in the room. That familiarity had worn a path that let doubt in. His naivete to these familiar experiences helped right my perspective. I was able to go back to work, though I have no memory of what I accomplished. I do remember walked home that beautiful May evening, feeling empowered again and a tad righteously angry when a woman I had never seen in my life passed me on the street and called out, “What a beautiful dress!” It felt like a movie moment. I went home and posted about it on Facebook. This week my Facebook memories reminded me of the event.
I’ve grown in confidence a lot since then. On a few occasions, I’ve even confronted people when situations like that have happened again. But mostly I’ve learned how to create an environment around me that doesn’t nurture that culture. That isn’t to say that things like that don’t happen. Whether it’s the blog meeting where we were developing a list of questions to put to our female engineers for the upcoming International Women’s Day post and the men at the table joked about asking them their favorite recipes. Or the time my peer told me that I needed to calm down when I sighed in frustration about a difficult project that was being discussed.
But I’ve learned how to make it inhospitable for doubt and instead take action. I was happy to co-host our location’s first International Women’s Day. Pleased to see the room full of women who turned up to talk about our company’s policy of parental leave and our parent company’s report of pay inequality. Excited that our male head of HR joined us and enthusiastically listened and asked thoughtful questions. Encouraged by my male counterpart who came and asked questions about how he could make sure that his three sons who were just joining the workforce could be part of the solution, rather than the problem. Found laughter when I offered to host the International Men’s Day event where we could talk about the real and serious issues of work stress leading to chronic disease, offered to buy them flowers and chocolates or the beer and soft pretzels they asked for when one of the men piped up to say, “Michelle, let’s be honest. Every day is men’s day. We’ll be fine.” I’ll continue to lead wherever I can and try to make life better for those around me each time. I’m sure there will be many more instances of my gender being brought up in business situations. So, I’ll continue developing the skills needed to lead while female.
MarketingMichelle 