Halloween, vacations, and life events like weddings seem to be freebies from what I’ve seen. They have elements of escapism, fun, and are not seen as “regular day-to-day life”.
A person who plays it pretty cool in their day-to-day but is also fairly proud of their body/looks will use those opportunities to slip in a few bikini photos, a dress with a high slit, or a sexy costume (or gender equivalent). I believe most people that look at those photos are supposed to think “Damn, they’re taking care of themselves, they look good”. Those events also have a defined ending. When the vacation is over, it’s over. There not going to keep rocking the bikini/costume to the next business meeting.
A person posting a lot of that kind of thing without context would be looked at more questioningly. Are they trying to be an influencer? Are they advertising for their Onlyfans?
Well, shit. I think you guys are onto something, and I’m not proud to admit it. But here it is: I struggle with focusing on a woman’s professional talents when I also find her attractive. I think I generally do a pretty good job of winning that struggle, but it’s always back there somewhere, and seeing this woman in that outfit tipped the scale the wrong way for me.
So maybe all my “range of thoughts it provoked” is just a smokescreen for Dang I never realized “Lisa” was this hot and I don’t know how to handle that.
In the world as it should be, she should be able to be professional in her professional life, while still being, if she so chooses, a sexy bunny in her personal life. And in that world, the people she interacts with professionally, even if they do happen to have seen those pics, should be able to interact with her professionally without regards to those pics.
But alas, the world we live in is not entirely as it should be. As a result of posting those pictures, in the world as it is, there will be some who won’t take her as seriously, even in an entirely professional context. Which is entirely their fault, but it’s still something that will happen.
Put it all together, and her posting sexy pictures on her personal social media is not in any way immoral or unethical… but it might be unwise.
And yet there have been several publicized cases in the last 2-3 years of people getting fired from their job for things they said or did on their own time.
Yeah, it feels pretty hardwired to me. Which sounds like (and may be) a bullshit excuse, but at least I’m aware of it and work against it as much as I consciously can.
Bravo. I’m constantly working against my outmoded “hardwiring”…
Coming from a far-right-wing white family (in the midwest suburbs, in the Eisenhower Era), that includes casual racism, casual sexism, casual ageism, casual classism, and casual casualwear.
Yeah, Grrr’s analogy doesn’t hold up. People have complained about or been taken to task for humor, political and religious views, crimes, and all sorts of pictures from sexy to including your underage kids in online photos. We rarely go a week without someone getting in trouble for a tweet.
Humanity is having trouble understanding that the internet isn’t private, even those that have grown up with it. Maybe especially those that have grown up with it.
There are egregious contradictions both within and between people in how they want to be perceived, how they want others to be perceived, and how they want others to perceive them. You have just found one.
Trying to make sense of it is like trying to make sense of why certain male spiders willingly approach mates that will eat them. It does make sense from a certain perspective but not from certain others.
IRL once colleague B later mentioned that they noticed the pinup calendar colleague A had in their office, so, while in principle nobody should really care about some coworker’s hardcore BDSM photos or whatever, it is possible such things might stick in someone’s mind, which the coworker who posted them should know. But that does not mean it’s a good idea to bring up someone’s sexual proclivities with them in the break room at work, even if you know, or think you know, what they are.
So the person is explicitly sharing “sexy” or hard-core photos of themselves with the whole office, not on some personal web page? That already sounds unprofessional. Why do you want to get involved? Not something I have personally dealt with, though,
“Lisa” can be – has every right to be – both a brilliant digital marketer and a sexy party girl. She also has the right to share all the facets of her life however and with whomever she chooses, and to own any consequences.
She’s not asking for my opinion, let alone approval. Any issues I have are 100% on me.
Just want to say congrats on putting thought into how you feel about this, ad whether you want to be the kind of person who feels differently, how your feelings might affect other thoughts/actions, and whether you are willing to try to figure out what you can do to change those feelings.
With so many aspects of sexuality in modern society, I feel far too many people with various positions act as tho their perception is the only acceptable position, and that anyone deviating from that position is simply wrong and, in some ways, a worse person for that.
My general position is that everyone should feel considerable freedom to act/look however they wish - provided that doing so does not overly affect others. However, when someone chooses to act or present themself in a certain manner, I think they have to accept that other people will likely respond in various ways.
You are kinder than I am. There’s that story that I think Sean Connery told about how before his first ever lovemaking scene he was trying to think how he would break the ice because it’s obviously an awkward thing to do. So he thought about it and came up with a line.
As he and the actress started to get into position he said “When I lie on you something is either going to happen or it isn’t. Either way I apologise.”
There’s a lot of tangled sexual politics in that line.
ISTM that the hard line some draw between the work life/self, and the personal life, is learned over time and a result of what we term “maturity” (such a loaded word).
I like to think that I have an accurate recollection of my younger years. Back then, I worked in a situation with lots of other young people and we didn’t put a lot of thought into separating our work life from our personal life. Work was part of our social sphere. There was no internet, but that’s not really relevant to the point.
Getting older, it seems one naturally gets tamer. But it is a trap to apply ones values as one gets tamer to the next generations. Mix in any sexual component you want, and it gets even trickier. I find it best to recognize that whatever you are seeing/witnessing/overhearing etc., it’s just something that is out in the public and you are part of the public, nothing more. Sure, sure, - speeding cars and baby buggies and all that, step in to prevent any REAL tragedies, but otherwise MYOB.
Holy smokes. If I have trouble in an office setting separating my professionalism from my libido, how on earth would I maintain professionalism if my job actually required naked contact with an attractive female? Yikes.
In my 20s I routinely dated women I worked with. Looking back I can’t believe how lucky I was that those situations never blew up negatively.
There is an almost absurd level of disjunct between how supposedly unwise it is to mix romance with work, and the percentage of people who meet their romantic partners through work.