Bullish: Dealing With Sexual Harassment When You Work For Yourself (Or Just For Some Dude)

Welcome to Bullish! This column previously appeared weekly on our sister site The Gloss (here’s an archive). The column will focus on helping women get and make the most of their careers.

I’m filing this column from France, where you can totally show your tits on the beach, and not in a sort of empowered-feminist-protest way (I defy thee, sexists!), but the same way you show your nose and ears and knees and stuff and nobody really notices and the kids are naked anyway and whole families are there with mom’s exposed breasts and everyone’s like, “That’s how we tan, bien sûr.”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I once did some art modeling for an “artist” from a traditional culture. He wanted to talk about how, obviously, I must be going to great lengths to hide my art modeling from my parents and OMG we share a secret so it’s like I own you. “Actually, no,” I said. “My mom thinks it’s pretty cool that I’m in paintings. Maybe some of those artists will be famous some day.” He said something like, “BUT … LADY … SKIN …,” after which he cackled like an evil witch.

My theory: the more repressive the culture, the more likely that someone who’s seen your ass just can’t let it go. The U.S. is sort of a middle ground of puritanical culture (Anthony Weiner) versus sexual permissiveness. That is, a young woman can easily make a few bucks doing various forms of modeling – often for skeezy men who won’t let you forget that you are now made entirely of ladyparts.

A young woman I’ll call “Lucretia Mott” wrote in with a pressing question (last week’s Bullish answered a question from “Madeleine Albright” and a previous column answered a question from “Lisa Simpson”) on just this topic.

Early this year, I offered myself as an intern for a company that makes screen-printed t-shirts and other products that mostly say “fuck” on them a lot. I thought the products were hilarious but also intelligent, and it didn’t bother me at all that the shirts were being modeled by, mostly, women in panties.

I quickly graduated from intern to personal assistant. I do EVERYTHING. I move boxes in the warehouse. I hire contractors. I sit in on board meetings. I make sure he pays his mortgage and picks up his children on time. I designed and ran a booth at a trade show.

And yes, I modeled. At the beginning. And now I seriously wish I hadn’t.

My boss is a rich man, and I am His Favorite Employee. He pays me very, very well, occasionally dumping money on me when I haven’t earned it. For example, he will drive us around in his own car all day running errands and then give me $40 “for gas” at the end of the day … even though I used none. Once he decided to pay me $200 instead of the $40 I’d actually worked for. Who am I to turn down an extra $160?

I should mention too, that my boss pays everyone very well. I may get all the bonuses, but when he decides to pay me double for the day he pays everyone else double too. And he loves helping people make their dreams come true; when I cleaned his garage I found boxes and boxes of thank you letters from people whose careers he helped. He’s very polite and respectful towards everyone he does business with, no matter what.

The problem is, he’s super creepy.

He tells me about his sex life with his wife, in front of his wife, which makes us both uncomfortable. He’s also seen me basically naked due to changing clothes at the photo shoots. This means that my workday is filled with lewd comments about my boobs and “cute ass”.

It’s been like that from the beginning, but the more embroiled in this company I get the more I hate it. I LONG for a job where no one’s seen me naked. Where they at least keep it to themselves when they undress me with their eyes. It’s affecting my sex life with my boyfriend heavily; I’m way too skeeved out after work to want to bang anybody. Other people have begun to ask me to model for them, and I can’t stand it. I’ve gone from comfortable with my sexuality to wanting to keep it secret and private and not let anybody know that I have boobs and a vagina. I dress more conservatively now and am supremely uncomfortable when anyone tells me how pretty I am, because I assume they’re following it up with some grotesque comment in their brain.

So, here’s my dilemma. I know I can/should/WILL have a talk with my boss about all of this. And maybe he’ll change his behavior; at this point, I’m fairly indispensable as an employee. But I’ll still know what he’s thinking, and I don’t know if I can ever get over that.

I really hope you’ve got some kind of advice on what to do with this job. Because I am so sick of hearing about my ass when I’m trying to balance someone else’s budget.

Lucretia, I’m so sorry you’re being skeeved up every goddamn day.

I feel as though I’ve read dozens of articles about sexual harassment that deal with whether and how you should report it. However, what if you work in a situation in which there’s no one to report it to?

Here are some thoughts, for you and for anyone dealing with sexual harassment where there’s no Human Resources department to go to.