Letters to the Editor
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chaste dressing
Whether or not the 'Kitty not happy' Tshirt is sexual harrassment I can see problems with the description of how this woman is acting (letter below).
I am feminist, liberal AND chaste in my behaviour with everyone except my husband. Is that unempowered? It feels empowered to me. My sexuality is private. My intelligence, charm - everything I have to offer at work or in social life - is what I want people to notice and appreciate about me. When I dress for work I try to look attractive, immaculate and powerful. Looking sexy would utterly undermine that.
Some of the women I see in workplaces are playing with fire, and I have never seen it work for anyone in the long run.
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Not all about them
All of this stuff is only tangentially about men.
Very tangentially.
Part of the problem is the disparity in visual sex drive. While I appreciate a good-looking, partially-dressed man, the sight doesn't make me immediately want to jump his bones. I can have a day at the beach without ever once thinking about sex, so it took me a while to figure out why men got so hyped up about good-looking, partially-dressed women, not because I finally experienced it myself, but because I was finally able to consider such an alien perspective.
So at any age, if I owned a shirt with a cartoon cat on it that said, "Kitty's not happy" (which I suspect is the real quote, as that shirt was sold at WalMart; I Googled it), I would think it was cute. Not sexy, not suggestive, but cute. As in a cute little cat, which we are apparently not allowed to call "kitty" anymore.
If some much older man got in my face about it being a personal ad and suggested that it was intended, deliberately, as an obvious double-entendre, again, I'd freak. I wouldn't even bother answering. I'd just walk away.
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Actually...
I'm Gen X and I took it to mean her vagina, specifically because when the LW said it was a double entendre, the girl didn't say "Get a grip" or even just roll her eyes.
Actually, she did. He says: "She informed me that Kitty was a cartoon character."
In other words, she told him to get a grip, and he pressed on anyway.
That's another part of this that makes it creepy, and part of why I think she might have been mocking him, telling him that if her clothes (a freakin' cat t-shirt!) were a sexual come-on, then his use of French was, too.
Even worse for him that he then assumed she was coming on to him, personally!
Vagina didn't occur to me, because I have a pre-adolescent son. "Kitty's not happy" or "Puppy's not happy", or whatever happens to be around, is a fairly normal part of their speech at that age, used when whatever it is isn't getting something it can't have anyway. Sometimes it describes a kind of helpless outrage at the cruelty of fate, but other times it describes a petulant sulk.
Describing the state of one's private parts isn't even on the table.
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You're welcome, AKA Smith
By the way, the "John Thomas" reference isn't in Lady Chatterley, or even the early version I referred to. It was just he showed the book to someone, and that person got offended and commented, "You should call it John Thomas and Lady Jane." At least, I think that was how it went. Not sure if Lawrence actually considered using it afterwards, or if that was an editorial choice when it was posthumously published. I know another title Lawrence considered was Tenderness.
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To Anonymous who says, "I feel kind of cheap and dirty afterwards."
This woman is behaving inappropriately, but if you haven't told her to cut it out and if you have in anyway encouraged her, you cannot really claim to be very harrassed. My advice is think of your wife and tell the tattooed one to stop her behavior immediately. Don't worry about hurting her feelings. If she keeps it up after you have made your disinterest clear, it's sexual harrassment. You can certainly take action if you choose. It is your mixed feelings that are tripping you up.
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Typical
Yes, because that'll certainly help solve the situation, hitting her... WTG Mister!
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She gets away with it because . . .
She is an attractive young woman in a T-shirt with a saying that you have to look at her breasts to read. AND she's probably announcing to the world that she's horny.
Cary is turned on to her. That's why he would let her get away with it. And in fact he waxes eloquent about the crushing burden of the workplace in a nice little essay. I can see Cary impressing her with this speech, all the while looking at her T-shirt as much as possible without being too obvious about it.
C'mon, admit it. I might be the same way. We men are like that. Attractive young women always get a pass.
Like another commenter said, a guy who wore an analogous T-shirt and who made it known he was waiting for a divorce, would not get the same treatment from Cary, or the same lack of concern from the supervisor.
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Dictionarywonking.
I know it's tacky. However.
Cock, pussy, dick, and beaver all have dictionary definitions that include acknowledgement that they are slang for body parts. Kitty does not.
That's because it is not slang for the vagina.
However, "fig" is.
The only element of the behavior the LW describes that *isn't* inappropriate is the slogan on her shirt. The oversharing? Inappropriate. The fact that she's wearing a t-shirt to work? Possibly inappropriate if t-shirts are not acceptable in that environment. The fact that her t-shirt has a slogan on it at all? Possibly inappropriate if t-shirts with slogans on them are not acceptable in that environment.
But it seems from her manager's reaction that t-shirts with slogans on them are not a violation of the dress code in their workplace. Also, the LW notes that he complained based not upon the fact that it was a t-shirt or that it was a slogan t-shirt, but rather by quoting a reference in the dress code to not wearing t-shirts with "personal ads" on them. If that's in the dress code, then the dress code is actually condoning the wearing of t-shirts that do *not* have advertisements on them. Advertisements, in the context of a dress code, by the way, are meant to keep people from wearing shirts that advertise Joe's Crab Shack, so they're not promoting outside businesses.
If she was wearing a shirt that said "Beaver Not Happy," I'd give it to you. "Pussy Not Happy"? Of course. But, try as you might, no one can establish that the word "kitty" is interchangeable with beaver and pussy as slang terms for the vagina. That's because it isn't.