Women Trade Hard Hats for High Heels

Most of the time, finding fashionable work clothes is no problem for Karen Teeter. She simply wears what everyone around her is wearing: jeans, heavy shoes and a hard hat.

But Saturday, Teeter, a Somis resident who works as a building inspector for Los Angeles County, got a chance to show a different side of herself.

Stepping into a conference room of the Clarion Hotel in Simi Valley wearing a pale blue suit, matching earrings and high heels, Teeter strutted and twirled to an appreciative crowd of women gathered at tables around her.

At the second annual fashion show for the local chapter of Women in Construction, a networking and support organization with 20,000 members nationwide, the clothes were strictly meant for off-hours.

Wearing fashions they selected from local merchants, 14 models from the construction industry appeared in a variety of styles. Outfits ranged from tie-dyed cotton dresses from Foxies Fashions in Moorpark to khaki shorts from Miller’s Outpost, to polyester evening dresses from Canary’s II in Simi Valley.

It was not a Paris ramp. Several models walked self-consciously, apparently oblivious to the price tags still dangling from their sleeves. Some made comments to the audience.

No one, however, seemed to mind. Most seemed to be more concerned with wearing outfits that made them feel pretty.

“The minute you say you work in construction, people get all these images about you,” Teeter said. “Usually,” she added, “feminine is not one of them.”

Debbie Sanders, president-elect of the Simi/Conejo chapter of the organization, concurred. “People still have all these stereotypes when you tell them what you do. One guy even said he thought the organization was for women who wanted to dress like men.”

Most audience members said they would like to change people’s attitudes about women who work in the construction industry, including contractors, electricians, plumbers, cement layers and heavy equipment operators. But dispelling myths was not the main goal of Saturday’s show.

Christine Cooley, a Simi Valley construction company office manager who came up with the idea for last year’s event, said the fashion show gives the local chapter’s 23 members a chance to socialize.

And proceeds of the $13-per-head event will be given as a scholarship to an outstanding high school senior or college enrollee who wants to pursue a career in construction. Last year’s event netted about $300.

“There are national programs now that are teaching women all phases of construction, and women are beginning to understand that the field is open to them if they have the education and training,” Cooley said. “We want to encourage this as a choice.”

For Teeter, 49, a career in construction came less from choice than from necessity.

Teeter said that after she divorced more than a decade ago, she didn’t have enough money to buy as nice a house as she and her two young children had lived in. Determined to have more than a tiny condominium, she sent away for a log-cabin kit and put her money into a small piece of land.

“I had had a wood shop class in high school and put together my kids’ bunk beds, but once the cabin kit came, that’s when I really wondered what I had done,” she recalled. “This wasn’t the same as a bunk bed.”

She worked as a hairdresser and lived in a trailer for two years while she finished the house. Soon afterward she sold it for double the cost and proceeded to build another in Oregon. Within a few years, she had obtained her general contractor’s license. In 1988, she worked as a building inspector for Ventura County and took a job with Los Angeles County a year later.

“There’s a lot of sexist stuff you come across in the field, but you get past it,” she said.

Fashion show organizers asked her if she would be willing to wear a wedding dress in the fashion show, even though there is no one special in her life now. In the spirit of fun, she complied.

“I guess I am a threat to most guys,” she said. “I can take care of things. I’m not helpless, and a lot of men don’t know how to handle that.”