Chapter 6: Dress and the Female Professional: A Case Study of Working Woman

Women and their clothes have always been a serious matter (Hollander, 1993). Using a visual social semiotic approach (van Leeuwen, 2005), in this chapter we undertake a rich viewing of 1980s cultural texts to explore the performative heritage of gender through the adoption of clothes, makeup, and accessories. This is a timely investigation because today’s 40-something women leaders and managers were socialized into their understandings of being professional women as a result of the proliferation of print, television, and film images in the 1980s (see for example, Baby Boom, 1987; Working Girl, 1988). Through these images, women were instructed in the arts of tackling men’s dominance in the workplace through the adoption of shoulder pads, big hair, and sharp suits. They are now playing out these roles as managers in an increasingly surveillance-oriented world due to the growth of the Internet, social media, and readily available digital image technologies. These media enable a (damaging) hyper-visible and obsessive focus on women professionals’ appearance; for example, politicians in the press are assessed on their fashion sense before their ministerial skills and abilities (Greenslade, 2014). At the same time, self-help texts for female professionals continue to be full of advice stressing how women should look the part if they want to succeed (Kenny & Bell, 2011).