Welcome to Well, That Sucked, our weekly compendium of exactly what it sounds like. Thrown in this week’s garbage: babes.
Boy, oh boy, we broads sure have come a long way. Can you believe that it was just over a decade ago when Ariel Sharon openly admitted that he was having a hard time concentrating on his meeting with then U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice because “she has very nice legs“? I sure am glad that kind of classic sexism is over and no one has ever seen it again ever and everything having to do with women was wonderful forever.
Oh, wait: Iowa’s Supreme Court recently upheld an earlier ruling that it’s perfectly legal to fire someone if they’re just too good-looking and you don’t think you can control yourself. You, with your hunched back, dragging your knuckles along the ground, looking to beat something with your club and carry it on your shoulders, back to your cave.
To recap: dentist James Knight fired his employee of 10 years, Melissa Nelson, because he and his wife (and his pastor) thought his attraction to her would hurt his marriage. The Iowa Supreme Court—made up exclusively of men because, my god, if a woman showed up, it would be like Boner City up in there and no one would get anything done—ruled that the firing was perfectly legal because Nelson is a witch, and we should burn her before she casts spells over any other married men.
Burn her. BURN HER.
But the court also ruled that this wasn’t an issue of gender discrimination: Knight replaced Nelson with yet another woman. See? He’s not an asshole to women, only the ones he’s attracted to. It’s only gender discrimination when the girl is ugly.
It’s not just about Mr. Knight’s decision to fire his long-time, competent employee, but Mrs. Knight’s decision to be an insane person. For such an obviously miserable couple, they’re surprisingly open with each other. Not only is Mrs. Knight involved in the hiring and firing issues at her husband’s place of business, but she also actively talks to him about who and how he might cheat on her. Instead of taking a step back and realizing that she trusts her husband so little that he can’t have anyone but bog-creatures work around him (female bog creatures because FEMINISM), she tells him he needs to cut her loose. How does that conversation even go?
Something tells me she’s the same kind of woman who makes her husband hold her hand whenever they’re around her brother’s wife.
What this is really about, however, is what most things are about, which is me. I’m insulted. I have never, ever been fired for being too hot. I didn’t know that was an option! But here I am, with a job. People keep hiring me and I keep maintaining jobs and no one sexually harasses me at work. What a confidence booster it must be to have your boss tell you that he can’t even be in your presence because he’s falling over himself with his bulging Dockers.
This whole thing doesn’t make any sense. She’s not even that hot!
Here’s the rub: There is no such thing as an “irresistible” attraction. It’s a made-up thing propagated by rapey movies where the guy chases after a girl and she says no but, oh, she comes around, doesn’t she. An attraction can’t necessarily snuffed out as it never existed, but it can be maintained for years, silently, without anyone knowing. If Knight feels that strong a pull to cheat on his wife, he’s going to cheat on his wife. Women don’t exist solely in his office. Moreover, if humans weren’t able to externally control attraction, most of us would hump anything we like. Not everyone is into yiffing. Get off my leg.
Luckily for Nelson, this ordeal has opened up a wealth of new employment opportunities for her and her body. Come one, come all, see the World’s Most Babely Employee: She Puts The “Ass” In “Dental Assistant.”
As for the rest of us employed women, we’ll just have to keep working at getting sexually harassed at work, and then fired because we’re too hot. If we all just hunker down, stick to it, put our noses to the grindstone and mash our boobs together for long enough, we can get there, too.
