Other people's business


Secret diary of a businessperson who is also female

Naked nudity.

Dita Von Teese is almost naked in this picture. Photograph: Getty Images

The New Statesman's Businessperson Who Is Also Female asks why some women happily prance around naked in the office gym changing room only to then cover up in the presence of men in the boardroom.

Topicality Watch! By coincidence my esteemed peer Board Babe has recently written about a very similar subject over at the Telegraph.

As a woman who is also a businessperson, I have recently spent time in the gym. Maybe it's something to do with the Olympics?!? (Topical). I went to the gym recently, and couldn't help but notice that there were a lot of women in the women's changing room. Women who looked different from each other. Women putting their socks on, women opening and closing lockers. Some of these women had literally no clothes on them at all.

All this got me thinking. Why is it, that in the changing room, women will happily wear no clothes - confident as wood nymphs frolicking in an autumn glade - yet in the boardroom will often "cover themselves" through wearing several layers of clothing (this point is metaphorical)?

In a recent meeting, in which our company announced that half the staff were about to be made redundant, I noticed that many of the women were quiet, with defensive body language, eyes on the floor. I felt like we had returned to the 1950s, or migrated to Saudi Arabia, or been flung forward into some futuristic dystopia where women are quiet/clothed. Where was the "naked ambition" they had shown after real tennis? Surely they could have pulled their socks up (metaphorically), rolled up their sleeves (metaphorically), and come up with some ideas to pull this company up by its boot straps? Why are women so rubbish apart from me?

My advice to women? Be better.