I was reading Atul Gawande's article on American healthcare costs in the New Yorker and really enjoying the piece until I ran smack into this little gem:
"I went to see the hospital’s chief operating officer, Gilda Romero. Truth be told, her office seemed less churrigueresco than Office Depot. She had straight brown hair, sympathetic eyes, and looked more like a young school teacher than like a corporate officer with nineteen years of experience. And when I inquired, “What is going on in this place?” she looked surprised.
Is McAllen really that expensive? she asked."
Emphasis mine.
The article is here.
Can you imagine the author describing a MALE corporate officer in that way?
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Gawande's Astute Observation.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/15648
Yeah. It happens all the time now. I won't say it's a consistent thing amongst journalists as a whole, but some of them do it all the time as a hook to draw people into the story.
If you were to see him do this over and over with female interview subjects but not male, then you could have beef with Gawande specifically. But overall, this has become fairly common regardless of the subject's gender or other factors.