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Monday, July 15, 2024

Are High Heels Worth It?

Yes, this is part of my sex, Sex, SEX series, but not in the way you think. Among other delightful effects, heels make a woman taller. Sometimes that's a big help.

Dig this image from the attempted assassination of Trump.

That's a secret service agent right there. Her job is to cover the VIP, Trump, with her body. She is about a foot shorter than Trump which means his head is left exposed when she finally gets into position. Her short stature is what allowed the capture of this iconic image.

If she'd been the height of the secret servicemen, we wouldn't have been able to see Trump's head, which is kind of the point of the scrum of secret service in situations like this.

Earlier, Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle let everyone know that one of her goals was to see the Secret Service be 30% women. Yay.

In a job where size matters, they're ignoring basic sexual dimorphism, making it problematic to do their primary job. It's paralyzingly stupid.

Exit question: Who is benefitting from this and how?

Super Special Bonus Video

4 comments:

  1. That's the thing. If a job actually requires you to be 6 feet tall and able to carry a 250-pound gunshot victim 20 yards to safety, then you write exactly that into the job description, and then you explicitly test all applicants for the job to make sure they can do it. You don't accomplish what you need by just saying, "only men can be hired for this job", because if a job is difficult enough that essentially no women can do it, than about half of all men aren't going to be able to do it either.

    If your job has real, serious physical size and strength requirements, say so and stick to it. And if you get some freakishly big and strong woman who meets the requirements anyway, go ahead and hire her. But if someone is claiming a job is so hard that women can't do it, but then turn around and hire some 5 foot 4 inch guy who weighs 130 pounds, then that's obviously a crock.

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  2. Yeah, one of the first things I noticed was how out-of-place and in-over-their-heads those women "agents" were.

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  3. Tim, you're forgetting about (or ignoring) human nature, and the nature of bureaucracies and of bureaucratic incentives. It is impossible to maintain the requisite strict physical standards once women are allowed/invited into occupations which no woman has any business entering: the military, the police, the fire brigade ... or the Secret Service.

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  4. I've seen -->claims<-- that --
    1) only one member of Trump's secret service detail that day was an actual secret service employee, the others being "temps";
    2) the security sweep of the locale was conducted only the day before.

    Based on an *official* statement I had seen earlier, I'm quite sure that the second claim is true.

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