Peterson: Makeup in the workplace is “sexually provocative”

Jordan Peterson

So there’s this college professor from Canada (sorry, everyone, we don’t always produce winners) who’s made a name for himself by giving young men groundbreaking advice like “clean your room” and other things their moms presumably told them for years, and who those same young men now revere as some sort of philosophical luminary. I don’t see it. What I do see, nonstop, is Jordan Peterson saying dumb things that make misogynists giggle. Things like how maybe there should be a rule against women wearing makeup in the workplace because red lips are “sexually provocative”. No, really:

JORDAN PETERSON: Here’s a rule. How about no makeup in the workplace?

VICE: [incredulous] Why would that be a rule?

PETERSON: Why should you wear makeup in the workplace? Isn’t that sexually provocative?

VICE: No!

PETERSON: It’s not?

VICE: No.

PETERSON: Well, what is it then? What’s the purpose of makeup?

VICE: Some people would like to just put on makeup, just to …

PETERSON: Why? Why do you make your lips red? Because they turn red during sexual arousal. That’s why. Why do you put rouge on your cheeks? Same reason. […] How about high heels? […] They’re there to exaggerate sexual attractiveness. That’s what high heels do. They tilt your pelvis forward so your hips stick out. That’s what they do. And they tighten up your calf muscles. They’re sexual display. Now, I’m not saying people shouldn’t use sexual displays in the workplace. I’m not saying that. But I am saying that that is what they’re doing, and that is what they’re doing.

[…]

VICE: Do you feel like a serious woman who doesn’t want sexual harassment in the workplace, do you feel like if she wears makeup in the workplace, is being somewhat hypocritical?

PETERSON: Yeah. I do think that.

As a sidenote: I sought out the unedited interview to see what may have been left out of the version most people saw (and, perhaps futilely, to negate the usual cries of “out of context!”). Turns out all they’re missing is a bit of cross-talk and a lot of pseudo-philosophical meandering. I’d like to bill someone for the minutes of my life I won’t get back.

Back to Peterson. But not for very long, because everything he said is so dumb and wrong there’s only so much one can say about it. There’s certainly a conversation to be had about the origins and nature of the beauty standards society imposes upon the genders, and women especially. But trying to frame lipstick and high heels as “sexual displays” in the workplace – and additionally, the notion that they ought to be proscribed, presumably because they make poor men too horny to work – is the kind of ridiculousness you expect from bad satire, not from someone bandied around as a public intellectual. Lipstick on women is no more sexual or distracting than ties and combed hair are on men, and I have yet to learn of a workplace that’s fallen apart because its male employees spent all their time gawking at their female colleagues’ tight calf muscles.

Honestly, Ed Brayton put it better than anyone:

But let me just ask one question: Isn’t Peterson asking for it? I mean, really, during this interview, he was dressed well, wearing an expensive suit that shows off his wealth. He was wearing a tie that points directly to his penis, in a blatant sexual display. So if a gay man were to sexually harass him, he has no one to blame but himself, by his own “reasoning”[.]

If you can’t differentiate between polishing up your appearance in concordance with cultural norms and sexual signaling, there’s just no helping you. And perhaps you should stay away from women.