In the Workplace, Is Miniskirt the Message?

As a talk-show host, I’m concerned about what’s important to women. So I was intrigued by Howard Rosenberg’s commentary on “television’s court of mixed messages” (Calendar, Oct. 10). I couldn’t have been more disappointed.

An insightful and well-respected critic used his forum on a highly charged issue to talk about miniskirts. I am sorry, Howard, but the fine line between sexual impropriety and legality is not a hemline.

So why his apparent attack on women’s wardrobe? Is a woman wearing a short skirt really sending mixed messages? To me, the only mixed message is that it costs more to dry-clean the miniskirt than it does men’s pants.

This tired argument was used for men as an excuse for rape until it was finally acknowledged that rape is motivated by anger, not arousal. Sexual harassment is no different.

It is about the abuse and misuse of power, not the normal healthy interaction between equal members of the opposite sex.

And another thing--who decided, as Rosenberg writes, that “women want to be viewed in the workplace as androgynous?”

I must have been out of town when that happened.

The last I heard we were all human beings no matter how we dressed--or undressed. Mike Tyson does his job in a pair of shorts and no one’s complained of receiving any mixed messages from him.

Wearing baggy pants and a button-down shirt won’t prevent sexual harassment. We learned that lesson in the ‘70s when floppy ties and dress-for-success suits were the preferred attire of the professional woman.

Then designers began featuring clothes that flaunted our differences. Suddenly women could stop looking like second-class men and dress like the first-rate women we are. And if that look includes short skirts, I think that’s terrific.

If, on television, as Rosenberg stated, Teri Garr’s skirt was literally just six inches long, it would have been a belt! People aren’t allowed on TV wearing only belts--or at least not according to the censors on my series.

Men, or women, dressing provocatively, appear to have little to do with the Judge Clarence Thomas-Anita Faye Hill case. It is about the abuse of power, the validity of the judicial confirmation process and the role of the media in bringing these issues to light.

Rosenberg himself points out that to provoke and sensationalize makes good television.

He apparently discovered that it makes good newspaper too.