All male newscasters have the same hair too. Stop trying to make everything a feminist issue.
Source? Observation? On how many instances? I'd like to know too, in order to compare, but before asserting something as strong as "Stop trying to make everything a feminist issue", you have to at least reach the data bar of what you are challenging. The original article does (as often with popular reporting) a shitty job at providing references and I couldn't trace the original research paper, but assuming correct copy-pasting we at least have this from the article:
> "Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, analyzed more than 400 publicity images for local broadcast journalists and found that 95.8 percent of female anchors and reporters had smooth hair. About two-thirds had short or medium-length cuts. Nearly half of the women were blond. Zero had gray hair. Just one black woman in the UT study sample wore her natural curls."
-> What's the equivalent percentage for male newscasters?
The burden of proof is on the person making the claim that there is inequality. If the study doesn't demonstrate inequality then you can not use the study (in isolation) to prove inequality or to throw the burden of matching the statistics on the other side.
Every news anchor's appearance is carefully curated to present a safe face for the network.
From the article:
>> “The expectation for women to look young and pretty with smooth skin and smooth hair — and to conform to this very narrow standard — is so disproportionate. Men are allowed to be bald. They’re allowed to have curly hair. They're allowed to have straight hair; they're allowed to have hair that’s a little bit longer, a little bit shorter. They have so much more range of acceptability.”
> Stop trying to make everything a feminist issue.
Pretending sexual double standards (or the racial equivalent, etc) don't exist is de facto a defense of the sexist (and racist, etc) status quo. If this is not what you intended, I suggest spending time learning about these issues - including some of the history and other forces that created these problems.
Allowed to be bald?! Going bald is a terrible experience that many men have to deal with. The number of men that choose to be bald is vanishingly small.
> They’re allowed to have curly hair.
What are they supposed to do? Straighten it? All male newscasters have the same hair: short back and sides. And yeah, of course if they have curly hair the hair will be curly.
As for women having curly hair. Look around. Curly hair hasn't been in fashion for decades. It's nothing to do with being a newscaster.
> Pretending sexual double standards (or the racial equivalent, etc) don't exist
Typical knee-jerk response void of any logic. I didn't suggest any such thing. I'm just saying this isn't an example of that. The same standards exist for men. All newscasters look the same.
Also, please don't do gender flamewar (or other flamewar) on HN.
Allowed to be bald and keep their job.
> What are they supposed to do? Straighten it?
YES. Again, from the article:
>> But dismissing certain styles as “distracting” can also amount to discrimination, especially when it comes to women of color in the industry. “You’ll do better with straight hair,” says Brittany Noble Jones, a digital and broadcast journalist who is black and who relaxed her natural hair for years. For many like her, the expectation isn't just that you'll conform to a certain anchor bob — it includes replacing your hair's natural texture with something else.
Also, the business doesn't pay for the chemical relaxers. That gets expensive on a local news anchor salary (2017 avg starting pay: $29,500).
> The same standards exist for men. All newscasters look the same.
They obviously don't, but I suspect it's difficult for you to see this because comments like this suggests a limited, biased experience possibly due to Survivorship Bias[2]. Yes, all newscasters look very similar! That's exactly the point of the article! You don't see many women, people of color, LGBT people with the hairstyles they consider natural (or, in the some cases, are natural due to genetic differences). Men are allowed some additional variance, but a lot of people - especially women, and doubly so for women of color - are being forced to damage their hair at personal expense to maintain a look that “is stereotypically heteronormative, not overly sexy, and predictable.”.
How many men have lost their jobs (or were never hired) because they didn't pay for weekly treatments to hide their growing bald spot? Probably a few, but it isn't even close to almost every female news anchor having to go to extreme lengths to keep their job.
How many men have to chemically damage their hair to remove it's natural curl/roughness if they even want to be considered for the job? Because that's the current reality - and another example of systemic racism - for some people of color.
Pretending these groups are equivalent contradicts reality (and this article).
[1] https://rtdna.org/article/rtdna_research_salary_survey#TVSp