By Maria Padhila
Science has proven that I am an irredeemable, hard-wired bitch. It feels so good to have an excuse.
Recent news of results of a research study were quickly pounced on and extrapolated into irrefutable scientific evidence that women are bitchy to each other and basically mean girls at heart, so all the bad stuff that happens to us — say, at work — is our own fault.
We tear each other down, you see. That settles that whole income inequity thing right there, so bye.
Just kidding. I still have some bitching to do.
The university study put a group of women in a room to complete a task. As they were working, a young woman came into the room and asked about the whereabouts of the professor. The women thought the way they were doing the project was what was being studied, but actually researchers were studying their reaction to the woman coming into the room. She was dressed either in khakis and a t-shirt or in a short skirt, leather boots and a tight, cleavage-revealing pink shirt. Here’s how The New York Times described what happened:
In jeans, she attracted little notice and no negative comments from the students, whose reactions were being secretly recorded during the encounter and after the woman left the room. But when she wore the other outfit, virtually all the students reacted with hostility.
They stared at her, looked her up and down, rolled their eyes and sometimes showed outright anger. One asked her in disgust, “What the [expletive] is that?”