ITEM FOR WOMEN BANKERS - DEBRA'S CASE

The voluptine Debrahlee Lorenzana claims that her ex-employers in the Chrysler Building forbade her "to wear sexy garments or high heels because they distract" her male colleagues. “I can not help it that I’m curvacious,” she told reporters for NY Daily News, which just loved the story.
“And I am not about to go overeat to gain fifty to one hundred pounds simply because my employer wants me to be like everyone else.” The media have classed her as a babe that was too hot for Citigroup to handle.The story is no sillier than a lot that goes on in celebrity magazines. The 33-year-old "eye-candy from Queens" filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court. She alleged she was directed to refrain from turtlenecks, pencil skirts and tailored suits because clingy garments attracted excessive attention on the job. The presumption seems to be that Citicorp managers considered productivity suffered, hurting someone's bottom line - the inverse of what 'sexiness' is more often assumed to deliver positively to productivity? If sexiness is economically damaging by being distracting, or only in banking, there is a lot to be questioned about office work or in a bank branch.
Her attorney, Jack Tuckner said, “Debrahlee Lorenzana might possibly be very appealing in anything she wears.” Tuckner works for Tuckner Sipser Weinstock & Sipser and clearly find Debra's deportment productive in his firm, as does whoever she now works for.Feminism continues to debate the physical objectification of sexiness figurined as female. Post-modern post-feminism has no problem with that, but that's like saying bankers have no problem making money from asset bubbles. Bankers (not just the men) anyway are not feminist or even post-feminist, not an issue in a money-culture. Banks have a well populated history of losing 'constructive dismissal' suits as their kneejerk response to internal complaints of gender-bias and sexism etc. Citigroup, was the employer of a Debra, a Latino terminated for being unwilling to dress down in mid-town New York. A tearful Debrahlee Lorenzana read a prepared statement explaining why she is a victim of sex discrimination and asking for a human rights investigation. She claims she was fired as a business banker at Citibank after complaining that male colleagues called her good looks distracting. What males complain about that?
She says something that is certainly not post-modern or post-feminist, that being beautiful is a curse for her and always has been, because people attribute her achievements to her looks, so she's had to work twice as hard to get ahead, which is not an argument that I can follow. She says she can't win though hopes to by suing Citibank for firing her for being too sexy. Citibank certainly is accused of questionable actions — male managers pulling her aside and giving her a list of prohibited clothes and firing her for being late on dates that checked out to be weekends. She is not helping the case by her idea that she's just too beautiful - although I can think of some ugly male bankers who got to the top like Dick Fuld, generally prettiness gets there too - but other than in sales and PR it is not a major factor surely?
In letter she wrote to Citibank's HR department she said, "Other female employees were able to wear such clothing because they were short, overweight, and they didn't draw much attention, but since I was five-foot-six, 125 pounds, with a figure, it wasn't 'appropriate'. . . . Are you saying that just because I look this way genetically, that this should be a curse for me." Apparently she's five-foot-eight according so some press coverage, but otherwise she could be telling the exact truth here, except the genetically bit has been augmented as proven by a video found by the voracious press in which when a single-Mom insurance agent she went to get a DD to become two boobs on a stick in her words, like Pamela Anderson and to find her own Ben Affleck, an how plastic surgery is the "best thing ever" and commonplace nonsense like that? At JP Morgan Chase the rumour is that she'll be sacked there too this time for talking too much to the press! Her lawyer says if JPM&C sack her they'll sue that bank also. Her new boss has tried to get Debra to cancel television interviews.In the complaint against Citigroup, Debra claims that she was not properly trained and that she was "a target" to her colleagues. That is interesting - lack of formal training. She says she was a victim of sex discrimination and then retaliation for speaking up.I wonder what she can possibly imagine getting compensation, not even distress since she appears to relish the publicity and does not appear to have suffered significant loss of earnings, except of course legal fees. The fed-up femme fatale made a formal complaint to Citigroup's HR in May last year, and asked for a transfer, which she got in July. But at the new branch she was chided for failing to recruit new customers and was dismissed in August last year.
When the case came to court her gender-discrimination suit was dismissed because her contract with Citibank called for any disputes to be settled in private arbitration.
Ms Lorenzana, who wore a sleeveless black dress, during the televised interview, repeated her claims that Citibank allegedly canned her for wearing sexy outfits at work.