People really don't seem to get that regardless of whatever feelings they have about Daniel, he's in Dubai because of Louis. Think of him however you like but he said it plainly, "hire a transcriber. I don't do puff portraiture anymore". Louis had the complete option of simply not contacting him, simply letting Daniel die in his own oblivion and irrelevance that even Daniel himself points out.

"Legacy? That's for board members and assholes in loafers". Armand doesn't seem to want Daniel in Dubai either because of what Louis may want Daniel to do (publish a book, risk other vampires to come after him). So for all the questioning and sarcasm Daniel throws at Louis, he's still an old man in his 70s with a developing disability, locked in a penthouse apartment with no way out with two old vampires who are more than capable of tearing him to shreds. That's his choice but it's also Louis' choice to even have him there. If Louis didn't want the sarcasm, the bitterness, the relentless questioning and invalidation of his (blatantly constructed) narrative, he wouldn't have taken to asking Daniel to interview him again. If this was solely about Armand, Louis' life story has absolutely zero to do with whatever went down with Armand and Daniel. Louis has followed Daniel's work, has read his autobiography. He knows Daniel's work even has a motif of unreliable memory that becomes obscured with time (or another vampire's mind-bending ability). Again, Daniel is in Dubai because of Louis. No one is demanding he continue an interview with an old mortal man whom he could just as easily kill with no one questioning anyone else about it afterwards. Daniel is of no importance to even his own family now, yet Louis still wants their interview to continue. Frankly for all of Daniel's dismissive comments, Louis has had every opportunity and chance to kill him already or shut him up, have his mind wiped and send him home. The fact that he doesn't is more glaring than anything else.

"Should women wear makeup at work" Part 2

To recap from part 1:

- Both men and women use sexual displays at work to feel confident and be likable to others, because attractiveness and sexuality are linked

- Men's status displays communicate wealth, competence, harnessed potential for aggression (strength)

- Men can lower their status with displays of overt sensuality and allusions to sex work

- Women do not have a traditional status display for competence and strength

- Women's displays of wealth traditionally relate to a man's ability to provide for them

In this post I'm going to "blow apart" the third and forth items.

As I said in part one, it's not as though men's status increases proportionally to the sensuality he puts on display. There is certainly a sweet spot.

As JLP says elsewhere in the interview, in reference to situations that don't explicitly have a dress code, that sweet spot is "somewhere between a suit and boxer shorts". That's the essence of women's challenge.

It's worthwhile to look back in history to understand the situation. Men's modern Western clothing derives from basically two sources: military uniforms and sporting clothes. Whenever we see pictures of frilly frock coats from the 18th century, that's just a pimped-out version of a military uniform. The modern button-front shirt with the laid collar is 19th century athletic wear. The polo shirt was basically the same idea but it came later. Sportcoats - the stereotypical one being brown wool tweed with elbow patches - were worn as outdoors-wear for hunting, and they're not extremely dissimilar from the design of a WWI uniform jacket.

Upper class women's clothing was never designed with the concerns of combat and sporting in mind. It was just meant to look a certain way. While corsetry isn't the constricting evil it was made out to be, floor-length skirts and robes that are suspended away from the body get wet, pick up dirt, and become a fire hazard. Silk isn't a very hard-wearing fabric. Lower-class women's clothing has always been more functional, with shorter hems, tougher fabrics that suit the climate, and slimmer or shorter sleeves. The issue of pants was seemingly a religious one. Cross-dressing is forbidden by the Bible, and pants are thought to be immodest because they show the shape of the legs and the space between them. While pants for women are beyond acceptable and not really forbidden, there is still a vestige of skirts being more "appropriate", more formal than pants, and a skirt- or dress-wearing woman to be feminine and more respectable than a pants-wearing woman if one were forced to choose. Pants are fine for most contexts, but women's formal suits and tuxedos, and jumpsuits with the same material and embellishment as a dress, are still very polarizing. There was also an instance a few years ago of a woman being kicked out of a red-carpet event for wearing flat shoes - if I recall correctly, they were Louis Vuitton and were metallic or covered in crystals - instead of heels. They weren't men's shoes, and they couldn't be confused for work boots, but somehow they were considered to be not meeting the standard of the event's dress code.

Again, women have a contradicting set of standards. While practical clothing for hunting, sport, and the military were associated with male prestige, practical clothing for women - flat shoes and pants - continues to read as low-class, or at least lower class than fine fabrics, heels, and skirts. At the same time, there continues to be evidence that a sexualized appearance negatively impacts how others rate a woman's competence.

But, a heavily sexualized appearance also negatively affects men as well...

I haven't seen studies that directly deal with sexualization of men and competence, but there are hints of it in other studies, that show negative perceptions of competence in men wearing tank tops, exposed underwear, beach clothing, skinny jeans, deep-v shirts, too much jewelry, too much hair products, etc. There's a perception of sleaziness in a shirt with too many buttons undone, an animal print suit, or a metallic polyester shirt that looks like something from Night at the Rocksbury. Perhaps this isn't an issue of discrimination against women, but an issue of communication between men's style that shuns the "contributions" of sex work and things adjacent to it, and women's style that integrates - often to naive wearers - styles that come from sex work.

With that in mind, what is the history of makeup? It's complicated.

There's been a constant up-and-down regarding the acceptability of makeup. One century, makeup is normal and even men are wearing it, and the next, it's solely the mark of a whore.

America is a strange case in this respect, because since the first settlers arrived, the history has been almost three centuries of "makeup is for whores". Then, enter the 1920s, when film stars normalized makeup for everyday wear. Then in the 30's and 40's, red lipstick had become patriotic, seeing as Germany and Italy assumed the "makeup is for whores" stance (it's worth noting the Nazis were responding to the explosion of sex work and cinema in the Weimar Republic). In the 60's, a woman could be branded a mentally ill lesbian for not wearing lipstick.

From the 70's onward, designers began taking inspiration from sex work, and now we're in a place where a bra, hotpants, a fur coat, and thigh boots paired with heavily-contoured drag queen makeup is high fashion. In a weird way, though, perhaps there is some truth to the association with female power and the stripperiffic. A corset and high leather boots feel like armor, and ripped fishnets are unfussy and conjure images of tucking a knife in the waist of your cut-off shorts 'cause you can wield it if trouble finds you. Even in fascist countries - especially in fascist countries - men may have married the girl with virginal, white cotton, high-waist panties, and had missionary intercourse with her; but they paid hard-earned money to let their dark side out with the woman in the black lace thong. Getting whipped and stepped on, a freaky dance, or something involving a swing set, for a long time, wasn't normally something men could ask their wives for. Who has often inherited kingdoms more often? The king's wife, who he married to form a political alliance; or the king's courtesan or concubine, who he chose himself? Women channel the prostitute because she has more agency and power than the submissive, virtuous, pious maiden. The prostitute is colorful and exciting. She has better stories and has met more interesting people. She's seen the highs and lows of the human condition. She's ruled men in her own way.

The prostitute exchanges sex for agency and power, but do the men she engages with also see it that way?

Dave Chapelle said, of women dressing in a way evocative of sex work, "If you're not a whore, why are you wearing a whore's uniform?"

Exchanging sex for power in the workplace is quid pro quo sexual misconduct. If you're not exchanging sex, what are you exchanging, then, for power? Probably something like labor, expertise, revenue, technical support, reliability, etc.

Perhaps I just probed and hit bottom here. If I'm building an image of competence for women working alongside men, it doesn't look like sex work. I don't think that's discriminatory toward women, because men are also punished for appropriating the masculine aesthetics of sex work. It's just more difficult for women due to how ingrained the aesthetics of sex work are into mainstream fashion, how ambiguous the standards for "proper dress" are for one situation or another, the lack of history and norms of women in work, and how those make it easier for women to unintentionally slip from expressing themselves and being likably attractive to self-objectification and being too sexualized for the setting.

I suppose the first rule could be: If it's associated with sex work, don't wear it to non-sex work.

It's necessary to clarify: no one deserves or is "asking" to be sexually assaulted or harassed at work based on anything, including what they wear. There seems to be a fine line between saying "be aware of how others could misinterpret the messages you send" and victim blaming. The person making the unwanted sexual advances is the one responsible for their behavior. Acknowledging that the existence of dirtbags is inevitable doesn't excuse their behavior, and acknowledging they have predictable triggers does not absolve them from responsibility for the damage they do to others.