PressEthic

When I first started reading the New York article about Maureen Dowd, I got upset. Not only did I pay full price at the newsstand, I was promised an article about her “dangerous charm” and I got one that was crowning her the prettiest girl in class.

I went to Barnard College - all women, all the time, all there to flex their mental muscle. Here’s an article that proclaims, “But Dowd is more than the sum of her critical faculties; she’s an utter and unreconstructed fox. Something that nearly every person I spoke to about her mention, unprompted, is that men can’t resist her.” And, “Still, a common newsroom perception is that Dowd’s clique [Dowd, Michiko Kakutani and Alessandra Stanley] gets special treatment because its members use their charm instrumentally—an occupational hazard for successful women that runs roughly proportional to their physical attractiveness.” Barnard women are prettier than the ones at Columbia too.

We’re never going to stop marveling at the beautiful woman who also happens to be smart. Never. And the fact that Maureen Dowd works for a prestigious newspaper, a woman of letters, a Pulitzer-prize winner, probably makes her even better looking in the eyes of some people.

The question comes up (and is brought to mind by that second quote) about whether it’s ethical for pretty women to get preferential treatment in the workplace. We simply shouldn’t ask the question anymore. We need to accept the fact that this is true. Dowd is good at her job. If she can walk up to a Gingrich spokesman and check out his tie mid-speech too, then more power to her.

I would actually give her credit. You’d think that a person who is shrouded in a column wouldn’t have to worry about her looks or charm being in the spotlight. Instead, you can tell by the article that she’s found a way to be comfortable with it and use it to her advantage.

Journalists may strive to be objective but this is one area where being human trumps that. Maureen Dowd is an attractive, successful woman who wears “knee-high black boots”. As Paris Hilton would say, “That’s hot.”