vividtitian

From the lowliest intern to the Senator herself, appearance and dress are scrutinized. I believe every woman must have winced with knowing sympathy when now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was criticized for her cleavage on the presidential campaign trail. (1) For me, I wince every time I hear the term “skintern.” Almost immediately on beginning my internship in a Senator’s office, I learned the DC slang for a female intern showing too much skin: “skintern.”(2) Not that it matters, I feel like I have to state that I do understand the importance of profession dress for both genders. Still, as woman, I am bothered that we are “slutty” when unprofessional and young men who dress inappropriately are “sloppy.” “Slutty” has a very different and much more harmful repercussion for an intern’s career than “sloppy.” As a result, I am sometimes paralyzed in the mornings, worried that that my sweater seat is too tight or my button down is too low cut. I know that just by being a young female intern, I could be considered a “skintern” regardless of my dress; and, my male co-workers will never worry about being reduced to a “skintern.”