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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. AP is Administrative Professionals

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Speaker 1: Day formerly known as Secretary's Day, and that celebration, along

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Speaker 1: with the fact that administrative assistant slash secretary is still

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Speaker 1: the most common job for women in the United States,

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Speaker 1: is the reason why we wanted to do this podcast

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Speaker 1: on secretarial work in the history of the secretaries, how

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Speaker 1: women took over clerical work from men. Yeah, it does

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Speaker 1: go beyond Madman Kristen, if you can believe it. It

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Speaker 1: actually does have a very interesting evolution as far as

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Speaker 1: why secretary jobs became so important in the first place,

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Speaker 1: and those origins lie in the Industrial Revolution. Yes, um,

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Speaker 1: but should we offer first a snapshot of what secretarial

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Speaker 1: work looks like today? Yeah. The two thousand ten media

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Speaker 1: and pay for a secretary is just under thirty five

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which is roughly sixteen dollars and sixties six

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Speaker 1: cents to just pull that out of your head. I

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Speaker 1: did not. This is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

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Speaker 1: but that's sixteen and sixty six cents per hour. And

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Speaker 1: the qualifications are usually a high school diploma and basic

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Speaker 1: office and computing skills. The job outlook is decent twelve

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Speaker 1: percent projected growth for any uh job walks out there

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Speaker 1: who were curious, which is about on average. And like

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Speaker 1: I said, it's still the most common job for women.

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Speaker 1: And that made headlines a lot of headlines actually when

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Speaker 1: those numbers came out not too long ago, because people

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Speaker 1: were shocked that secretary is still the number one job. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: According to CNN talking about this, between two thousand and

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Speaker 1: six of people who call themselves secretaries and administrative assistants

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Speaker 1: were women. That's that's most of them. Yeah, in case

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Speaker 1: you didn't know. Well. And the thing about secretarial work

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Speaker 1: that will talk about as well is that even though

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Speaker 1: it's a solid job sector and is pretty important, the

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Speaker 1: inspecter has never been raised. We we still kind of

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Speaker 1: think of it. No One was happy to hear that

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Speaker 1: women still fill of secretarial jobs because I think there

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Speaker 1: is a stereotype that goes along with it, that is

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Speaker 1: that it's kind of demeaning work. Right. Well, there's still

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's still the perception also that you don't

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Speaker 1: do much as an administrative assistant. Um Lynn Peril, who

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Speaker 1: we will cite a lot in this episode. She wrote

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Speaker 1: Swimming in the Steno Pool, a retro guide to making

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Speaker 1: it in the office, write an opinion piece for The

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Speaker 1: New York Times in ap she kind of goes back

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Speaker 1: to when people in the you know, fifties sixties thought that,

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Speaker 1: oh man, we are going to have all these amazing

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Speaker 1: technological developments and secretaries won't even have to come in

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Speaker 1: for most of the day, like computers, electronic computers will

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Speaker 1: solve all of our problems. And she points out there's

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Speaker 1: one little sticking point that no matter how much technology

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Speaker 1: we develop, administrative assistance are really office assistance of any

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Speaker 1: kind are still expected to fetch the coffee. That's still

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Speaker 1: such a sticking point in so many offices. And she

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Speaker 1: cites a lot of women who ended up running into

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Speaker 1: trouble at their offices or even being fired for refusing

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Speaker 1: to go get coffee for people. Yeah, and perhaps because

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Speaker 1: of things like being expected to make coffee for people,

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Speaker 1: and perhaps because of the lack of respect that administrative

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Speaker 1: work get, it still remains quote and often taxing, sometimes humiliating,

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Speaker 1: an increasingly precarious job. But if we go back to

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Speaker 1: ancient Rome, and this is coming from the International Association

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Speaker 1: of Administrative Professionals. It was a respectable job of Secretaries

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Speaker 1: were usually highly educated men who took dictation as scribes

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Speaker 1: and often acted as trusted advisors. Yeah, you know, chiseling

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Speaker 1: all those little memos into uh, into stone tablets and

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Speaker 1: what not. We needed a steady head to steady steady hand. Um.

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Speaker 1: Moving into early modern times, though, members of the nobility

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Speaker 1: also had male secretaries who could speak several languages and

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Speaker 1: were required to have abroad education. And really, I mean

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Speaker 1: going forward until the Industrial Revolution, men dominated the field.

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Speaker 1: It was until the eighteen eighties that women took over,

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Speaker 1: and so in even even in the late nineteenth century,

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Speaker 1: women are still kind of in the home. They haven't

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Speaker 1: moved outside of really domestic work, I would say, um,

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Speaker 1: and you know, they were in their own spheres. The

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Speaker 1: clerk did the bulk of the work in the office

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Speaker 1: is drafting letters, copying documents, filing, keeping the books. But

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Speaker 1: because they were men, any clerical work they did could

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Speaker 1: reasonably be expected to help them move up the ladder eventually,

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Speaker 1: So you could start in an office in the late

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century as a clerk, but eventually become the VP,

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Speaker 1: the boss, the guy running the store. That's not so

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Speaker 1: much the case with women, but that whole moving men

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Speaker 1: up and paying them more also has a lot to

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Speaker 1: do with why women took over clerical work in the

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Speaker 1: first place. So with the Industrial Revolution came an enormous

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Speaker 1: amount of paperwork, and with that we have the quote

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Speaker 1: unquote feminization of low level clerical work and also a

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Speaker 1: revolutionary machine that really is a big reason to thank

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Speaker 1: for women taking over the sector, and that is the

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Speaker 1: invention of the typewriter. So after this is really interesting.

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Speaker 1: After the Civil War, the company E. Remington and Sons

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Speaker 1: was looking for a way to expand its product line

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Speaker 1: because rifles were not in high demand in peacetime. So

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Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy three it took on this typewriter design

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Speaker 1: that was designed by this guy last name Shoals, and

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Speaker 1: they sold it. Now, there are a ton of other

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Speaker 1: people who were also developing typewriters at the time, um,

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Speaker 1: but they weren't considering the typewriter for office work. A

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Speaker 1: lot of times it was marketed as more of a

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Speaker 1: quote unquote literary piano how melodic, yes, for for writers

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Speaker 1: and such. But Remington took a bet that it would

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Speaker 1: be used for clerical work, and it paid off. And

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Speaker 1: one other way that Remington made bank was by marketing

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Speaker 1: it towards women. And one way that they did that

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Speaker 1: was by casing one of their early is typewriter models

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Speaker 1: with a floral a floral casing. Casing it with a

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Speaker 1: floral casing, thank god, because I hate typing on just

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Speaker 1: plain black typewriters myself. Well in many of those early ads.

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Speaker 1: So for that Remington model, it was often modeled by Schuls,

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Speaker 1: the inventors daughter Lillian. So from the outset you have

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Speaker 1: these advertising images of women next to typewriters, and pretty

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Speaker 1: soon once you enter the early twentieth century, you have

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Speaker 1: the icon of the typewriter girl. Yeah, well, so why

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Speaker 1: did this become? Why why do we have a typewriter

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Speaker 1: girl icon to begin with? And part of that has

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Speaker 1: to do with companies realized they could pay women lower

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Speaker 1: wages to do the work. They realized when women started

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Speaker 1: entering the office during the Civil War because of employment shortages,

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Speaker 1: people are like, oh wait, wait, wait, women can do

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Speaker 1: other things besides just like cook me dinner. So they

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Speaker 1: realized that they need to get more women in the office.

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Speaker 1: Because a they can work and use their brains and

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Speaker 1: be they can be paid less. So you get these

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Speaker 1: secretarial schools opening up that offer professional training that make

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Speaker 1: it possible for women to enter the workforce without having

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Speaker 1: a college education. So that kind of broadens the appeal

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Speaker 1: for a lot of people. And there were a lot

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Speaker 1: of considerations for women too. I mean, yes, you can

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Speaker 1: argue that they're being taken advantage of, But for women,

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Speaker 1: like I said, there wasn't much outside of domestic work.

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Speaker 1: They had relatively high wages in the office compared with

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Speaker 1: the alternatives, and there was a certain status and respectability

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Speaker 1: to office employment. Plus you got that education if you

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Speaker 1: went to one of these secretarial schools. And so to

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Speaker 1: look at some of those salaries at the end of

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century in the Northeast, for instance, domestic servants

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Speaker 1: earned two to five dollars a week, factory workers a

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Speaker 1: dollar fifty to eight dollars per week, whereas typists and

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Speaker 1: stenographers earned six to fifteen dollars a week. Yeah. But

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Speaker 1: and even though that uh, stenographers six to fifty dollars

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Speaker 1: a week was anywhere from a third to half of

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Speaker 1: what men would make doing the same thing, Like you said, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: that was a great option considering that in five the

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Speaker 1: only female employment sectors you could go into we're teaching,

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Speaker 1: which was something that was also revolutionary at the time

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Speaker 1: because women had only recently taken over for men as teachers, uh, nursing, clerking,

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Speaker 1: doing the domestic servant work, or factory work, or of

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Speaker 1: course just getting married. And the number of women working

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Speaker 1: as stenographers actually rose pretty rapidly. In eighteen seventy there

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Speaker 1: were just seven seven women working as stenographers according to

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Speaker 1: the Census four. That's four point five of the one

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Speaker 1: d fifty four stenographers in the country. But by nineteen

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Speaker 1: hundred there were two hundred thousand, and by nineteen thirty

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Speaker 1: two millions, So that's an incredible increase I think as

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Speaker 1: far as women coming into that line of work and

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Speaker 1: quote unquote feminizing it. And these typists generally were from

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Speaker 1: the middle class urban households because typing was considered more

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Speaker 1: morally acceptable than factory and servant positions, so there there

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Speaker 1: was kind of a general type to the typeist, if

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Speaker 1: you will, yeah, um, speaking of the moral acceptability of it.

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Speaker 1: In nine the Ladies Holme Journal editor Edward Bach said

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Speaker 1: that office work is quote the best paid and most

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Speaker 1: respectable employment for a young woman. And again, I mean

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Speaker 1: the the whole advertising imagery of the women next to

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Speaker 1: the typewriter really can't be underscored enough. This was something

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Speaker 1: that Donald Hoake explored in his paper The Woman and

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Speaker 1: the Typewriter, a case study and technological innovation and social change.

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Speaker 1: And there was also at the time a picture postcard craze,

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Speaker 1: and uh, there were all of these postcards that would

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Speaker 1: come out showing the typewriter girl. And sometimes it would

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Speaker 1: be yeah, sometimes it would just be kind of a

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Speaker 1: you know, a pretty generic image of a girl next

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Speaker 1: to a typewriter. Sometimes it would be yes, a little

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Speaker 1: more titilating. There was one from seven that's three part

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Speaker 1: card showing a wife catching her husband with a secretary.

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Speaker 1: In one of the panels, she calls her an amorous

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Speaker 1: little upstart. So pretty quickly there too, though you have

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Speaker 1: the there's there is this discomfort of these women entering

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Speaker 1: the office, even though it's considered more morally acceptable. And

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Speaker 1: the novelty of the typewriter was really important because that

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Speaker 1: meant that this was a gender neutral job. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: women pushing men out of typing jobs. They were simply

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Speaker 1: filling positions in an expanding industry. Yeah, and it should

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Speaker 1: be noted that, Okay, so women weren't pushing men out

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Speaker 1: of jobs like, you know, physically, or they weren't being

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Speaker 1: hired over men necessarily, but the number of men really

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Speaker 1: did start to dwindle. And a nineteen or six book

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Speaker 1: even encouragement to think hard before they took one of

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Speaker 1: these jobs, because by the turn of the twentieth century

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Speaker 1: the position was already so feminized that they were like,

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Speaker 1: do you really want to, you know, get into like

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Speaker 1: a woman job. And one thing to think about two

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Speaker 1: is the fact that you know, even though we might

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Speaker 1: still consider you know, typing in low level clerical or

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Speaker 1: even in that description, oh it's just low level jobs.

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Speaker 1: This was revolutionary because typically women had moved out of

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Speaker 1: the house by you know, going for occupations, so they

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Speaker 1: had typically performed at home, which is why so many,

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Speaker 1: for instance, at that time, we're working in garment factories.

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Speaker 1: They were simply taking their jobs out of the home

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Speaker 1: and into the workplace. But the typewriter opens up this

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Speaker 1: whole new thing. Yeah, and in two we start organizing

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Speaker 1: the two the National Secretaries Association formed and it's now

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Speaker 1: the International Association of Administrative Professor Channels, and in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty one that group administered the first Certified Professional Secretaries examination.

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Speaker 1: And for anyone who does watch mad Men, you know

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Speaker 1: that there is a hierarchy among these secretaries, especially in

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Speaker 1: you know, the nineteen forties, fifties, and sixties. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of that hierarchy is very evident in the

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Speaker 1: steno pool. This is again coming from Lynn peril Uh.

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Speaker 1: She talks about how these cento pools are groups, large

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Speaker 1: groups of desks where all the women are hard at

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Speaker 1: work typing. They might be listening to a dictation on

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Speaker 1: their headphones, their headset um or or typing up notes.

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Speaker 1: And that's usually where the newbies got their start, is

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Speaker 1: in the stenopool. At the desk, so lowest on the

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Speaker 1: totem pole you have the type is moving slightly up

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Speaker 1: the totem pole, we have the stenographers who took the

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Speaker 1: dictation that the typists typed. Usually they took it by hand.

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Speaker 1: And then moving up even further you have secretaries. And

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Speaker 1: these folks provided support to execute cutives. And something that

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Speaker 1: like just kind of made me feel icky and awful

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Speaker 1: inside was reading about not that women wanted to be secretaries.

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Speaker 1: There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's the fact that

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Speaker 1: a nineteen sixties author told readers that you may have

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Speaker 1: once dreamed about being a doctor, a layer, or a scientist, ladies,

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Speaker 1: but today you can study to be a medical or

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Speaker 1: legal secretary. So it was like kind of accepting the

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Speaker 1: fact that that was as high as you could go

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Speaker 1: on the totem pole was to be a secretary to

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Speaker 1: a doctor or to an executive. Well, yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: mean again, it was still at the time this kind

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Speaker 1: of respectable work. You go to your typing school, you

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Speaker 1: you know, you graduate, and you go into whatever office,

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Speaker 1: whatever stenopool you might land in UM. But then they

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Speaker 1: we have the evolution from secretary to administrative assistant. And

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Speaker 1: Lynn Peril, who wrote that book Swimming in the Stenopool,

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Speaker 1: talks about how by the nineteen seven d's calling yourself

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Speaker 1: an administrative assistant was this intentional way of communicating to

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Speaker 1: your usually male superiors that listen, buddy, I'm taking myself

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Speaker 1: seriously and I expect you to take me seriously as well.

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Speaker 1: Because she recounts horror stories from other secretaries having to

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Speaker 1: to deal um with with guys, especially because of this

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Speaker 1: idea that secretaries were a little more than just quote

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Speaker 1: unquote hot to trot, pencil pushing woman who are there

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Speaker 1: to have affairs with their boss, right, Yeah, and the

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Speaker 1: whole the whole suspicion of the wife. And yeah, there

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Speaker 1: were a lot of those cards like you mentioned that

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Speaker 1: showed even back in the very turn of the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: that showed wives walking in on their husbands cannoodling with

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Speaker 1: the secretary. Yeah. Um, speaking of the whole secretary stereotype,

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Speaker 1: this is something that sociologists Seawright Mills is called doing

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Speaker 1: the housework of your boss's business. And secretaries were very

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Speaker 1: quickly either considered to be spinsters or seductresses. They were

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Speaker 1: essentially like the two schools of secretarial thought, where you

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Speaker 1: devote your entire life to being a secretary. I mean

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Speaker 1: even in these secretarialal manuals where they advise women to

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Speaker 1: really form their entire social lives around their secretarial work,

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Speaker 1: just to make sure that if their boss needs them

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Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat, they can be there

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Speaker 1: with their steno pad um or you pull a Megan

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Speaker 1: on Madman spoiler alert and you married boss. Yeah, there

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Speaker 1: was one of those manuals, like in the fifties or sixties,

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Speaker 1: I guess, talking about doing the housework for your boss

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Speaker 1: at the business, talking about how you know, with all

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Speaker 1: of this new technology, you know, you don't want to

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Speaker 1: get displaced and kicked out because they have computers or anything.

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Speaker 1: So you should really try to do stuff like dust

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Speaker 1: and empty the ash trays. Because what computer can do that, Kristen,

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Speaker 1: It can't, it can't. Roombas did not exist. But in Nino,

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Speaker 1: with the publication of a series of articles by May

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Speaker 1: Christie in the San Francisco Chronicle, um, we have the

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Speaker 1: emergence of the quote unquote office wife stereotype who is

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Speaker 1: really married to her job. But that also then gives

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Speaker 1: way to this more even more directly sexualized image of

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Speaker 1: the secretary. Yeah, which is why I mean, I think

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Speaker 1: there's still that stereotype in a lot of places about

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Speaker 1: you know, oh, my husband has a hot young secretary,

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Speaker 1: you know, just worrying that constant like stereotype of oh

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Speaker 1: he hired a good looking secretary, I've got to keep

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Speaker 1: an eye on him, right, And in the nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: even as some of these secretaries were shifting to the

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Speaker 1: the administrative assistant title and obviously wanting to you know,

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Speaker 1: have more dignity in their work. There does come a

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Speaker 1: point where secretaries and second way feminists do butt heads,

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Speaker 1: and this is something that Peril talks about as well,

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Speaker 1: because in nineteen seventy one, for instance, Gloria Steinham gave

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Speaker 1: a commencement address at Smith College and she references in

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Speaker 1: it a a idyllic future where women refused to learn

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Speaker 1: how to type. And then in March nineteen seventy two,

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Speaker 1: the National Organization of Women protested at the AD agency

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Speaker 1: that created the Olivetti Girl, as these are ads for

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Speaker 1: this type of typewriter which depicted dizzy headed sexpots her secretaries.

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Speaker 1: And I've looked at the ads and they are that

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Speaker 1: the whole thing is like, are you an Olivetti girl?

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Speaker 1: And it's you know, very pretty girls looking kind of vacant.

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Speaker 1: And so now is protesting this AD agency and they

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Speaker 1: were very anti secretary obviously coming from a good place

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Speaker 1: of you know, not having women kind of under the

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Speaker 1: thumb of these sexist male bosses. But there were also

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Speaker 1: a lot of secretaries administrative assistance at the time who

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Speaker 1: were like, hey, you know what I'm not really on

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Speaker 1: board with your feminism because you're saying that my job

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Speaker 1: is demeaning, but I say my job is an honest paycheck. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think, wasn't that. One woman in response to this said,

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Speaker 1: you know, like administrative assistance don't carry signs like like

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Speaker 1: we're fine where we are. We chose this line of work.

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Speaker 1: Go speak for somebody else, right, And and it's kind

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Speaker 1: of it is kind of interesting to think about that

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Speaker 1: when you consider how, um, you know, the typewriter, even

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Speaker 1: though it did create this initially create this massive gender

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Speaker 1: pay gap, which I'm sure is still the case because

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Speaker 1: there are some statistics finding that male secretaries still make

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Speaker 1: more than female secretaries today. Um, but it was you

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Speaker 1: could say it was revolutionary time in post Civil War America. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: the stereotype and pop culture really turned it into this

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Speaker 1: spinster or seductoris kind of thing. Well, speaking of male secretaries,

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Speaker 1: you don't really see them a lot, do you. I mean?

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Speaker 1: In her book The Elite Secretary, The Definitive Guide to

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Speaker 1: a Successful Career, Sandard Warbock talks about one man who

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Speaker 1: described male secretaries as being viewed with suspicion. He he

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Speaker 1: said that he felt like he was bucking societal preconceptions

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Speaker 1: by working in that arena. Well, and I feel like,

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Speaker 1: even though that was the eighties and today, like we said, um,

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Speaker 1: from those Beer of Labor statistics statistics that women comprise

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Speaker 1: of all administrative professional jobs, so obviously there's still very

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Speaker 1: much in the minority. But I was sure I was

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Speaker 1: going to find some kind of academic study of the

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Speaker 1: perceptions of male secretaries in the workplace. I did not

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Speaker 1: find a one, not a single one. And I don't

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Speaker 1: know maybe if whether that's because it is so narrow

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Speaker 1: or not, but I was surprised to see that. Um

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Speaker 1: almost as surprised to see how much itch of a

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Speaker 1: headline maker it was when the White House recently appointed

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Speaker 1: its first male social secretary, Jeremy Barnard, And it was

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Speaker 1: kind of like a double headline because he was male

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Speaker 1: and openly gay. But seriously, Washington kind of fell over

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Speaker 1: on itself at the idea of this male social secretary

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Speaker 1: appointed by the Obama administration. And he didn't want to

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Speaker 1: talk about it publicly for a long time. And the

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Speaker 1: only public statement that I've seen Barnard make dealt specifically

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Speaker 1: with organizing one event, not about like what do you

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Speaker 1: feel about being this male secretary? Yeah, it's probably like

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Speaker 1: I feel great. I make a great amount of money

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Speaker 1: doing Yeah, I get to work in the White House.

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Speaker 1: What do you Do? Podcast? Podcast? So I do think though,

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Speaker 1: that there needs to be a greater appreciation for those admirals,

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Speaker 1: Like you said at the top of the podcast, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: a lot of times there is an assumption that they

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Speaker 1: don't do anythinging. I mean, I know from working at

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Speaker 1: how Stuff works, our office manager, who is a male,

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Speaker 1: He is in that four percent, and this office would

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Speaker 1: fall apart if he were not here. I don't know

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Speaker 1: how we would function exactly. Um. And I think that

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Speaker 1: you know, male, female, whatever, that secretarial work should get

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Speaker 1: more of a stew and also recognize, um, it's historical significance. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And just how I mean, just how crazy it was

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Speaker 1: to read about the typewriter helping to create this gender

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Speaker 1: neutral job where none had been before. As far as this,

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Speaker 1: this job was really created out of thin air. I

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Speaker 1: mean for the most part. Yeah, we had scribes, we

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Speaker 1: had assistance, we had things like that. But this this

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Speaker 1: type ist job or these stenographers, that was really something

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Speaker 1: new after the Civil War, and there was no preconceived

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Speaker 1: notion of it being a very gendered male thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's unfortunate that those pop culture stereotype have in

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Speaker 1: a large way, you know, overshadowed with those archetypes of

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Speaker 1: the typewriter girl or the office wife. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: always always characterizing these women in relationship to men in

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Speaker 1: the office. But maybe that does reflect still kind of

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Speaker 1: the lingering discomfort with kind of women plowing through in

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Speaker 1: the office. Yeah, perps, So any administrative professionals listening, we

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Speaker 1: want to hear, especially from you. Oh and also here's

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Speaker 1: wishing you a happy admin day on ap But yeah,

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Speaker 1: right into us about what you feel about your job.

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Speaker 1: Do you enjoy it? Is it horrible to people look

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Speaker 1: down on you and make you just get coffee all

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Speaker 1: the time? What is it like? Right to us? Mom?

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Speaker 1: Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can send

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Speaker 1: your letters. I don't want to hear from Michelle about

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Speaker 1: our dress code episode. She said. When I was in

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Speaker 1: high school, during s You're a Week, we always had

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Speaker 1: gender bender Day where the boys dressed like girls and

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Speaker 1: the girls dressed like boys. Every year, without fail, boys

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Speaker 1: would get sent home for their skirts being too short

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Speaker 1: or their breasts being outrageously big, and girls were just

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Speaker 1: fine wearing oversized T shirts and drawing on facial hair.

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Speaker 1: So there you have it. Michelle's evidence on gender Bender

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Speaker 1: Day that it's easier to dress like a boy. Well,

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Speaker 1: I got on here from Sarah and she's writing about

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Speaker 1: the dress codes as well, which we've gotten a lot

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Speaker 1: of mail about the dress code issue, and it's it's

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00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:33,640
Speaker 1: all been very much entertaining, and she writes, I went

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Speaker 1: through my punk rock face during junior high. I fought

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Speaker 1: in one on two different issues concerning our dress code.

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Speaker 1: I often dyed my hair, staying within a dress code

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Speaker 1: of not doing wild bright colors, and I often did

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Speaker 1: natural red, brown and black. But one time I went

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Speaker 1: all out and did half of my head red, half

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Speaker 1: my head black, and split right down the middle where

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Speaker 1: my part was. I went through three classes, and finally

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Speaker 1: in my fourth, my science teacher gave me a disgusted

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Speaker 1: look and said, no, you cannot come into office like that.

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Speaker 1: Go home. And when I asked why, he said, you

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Speaker 1: expect me to be able to teach you with your

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Speaker 1: hair like that? No, So I was sent home for

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Speaker 1: the day and told him my hair had to be

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Speaker 1: solid by the next day. My mom would have none

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Speaker 1: of it and went straight to the dress code, which

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Speaker 1: red hair must be of natural color. And my argument was,

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Speaker 1: what about girls with highlights? Brown hair and highlights, It's

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Speaker 1: not natural, but you allow it. The school's response was

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Speaker 1: people were just used to that, and so he took

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Speaker 1: that one all the way to the district office and

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Speaker 1: I was allowed to keep my hair. And that same

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Speaker 1: year I got an industrial piercing through the curled cartilage

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Speaker 1: at the top of your ear. The same teacher sent

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Speaker 1: me up and I recited the section on piercings that

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Speaker 1: said no excess of jewelry in or about the ear,

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Speaker 1: and said there were plenty of other girls who had

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Speaker 1: two piercings in their card lists, just not joined by

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Speaker 1: a single bar. Again, I was able to keep my piercing,

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Speaker 1: and they changed the dress code the following year. I

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Speaker 1: did not go around finding things to beat in the

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Speaker 1: dress code. I didn't wear spaghetti straps or flip blogs

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Speaker 1: because it explicitly said not to. But when there was

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