| The things women do to be taken seriously. Last month, it was the tale of two entrepreneurs who invented a third, fake co-founder named Keith in order to get respect from their male collaborators. Before that, there were the women who adopted more masculine-sounding names to up their odds of landing a job. Today, it’s the story of a female chief executive who dramatically altered her appearance to get ahead. Eileen Carey, CEO of diversity software provider Glassbreakers, says she dyed her blond hair brown, chose glasses over contact lenses, bought looser-fitting clothing, and wears minimal—if any—makeup to make male investors feel more comfortable and to deflect any flirtatious, workplace advances. “I want to be seen as a business leader and not as a sexual object,” she told the BBC. “Those lines are still crossed very often in this space.” Carey’s strategy is especially interesting since some research suggests that women ought to take the opposite approach and play up their “beauty premium” as much as possible. In 2011, Catherine Hakim, a professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, argued—rather controversially—that attractiveness is an important economic factor in women’s careers and they should use their “erotic capital”—their beauty, sex appeal, charm, dress sense, liveliness, and fitness—to their professional advantage. Another study from 2016 found that women who put time and effort into their hair and makeup might actually fare better financially than those who do not. At the same time, other research concludes that women who master the use of the traits that are considered more “masculine”—aggressiveness, assertiveness, and confidence—are more likely to get promoted. To that point, there’s the fascinating case of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was interrupted less often by her Supreme Court colleagues once she started talking more like a man. What’s more frustrating than these mixed messages is that, in every instance, the onus is on women to convince workplaces to accept them, when, in reality, it should corporate cultures that change. —@clairezillman | 
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