"Dumb" female workforce is sexed up.

• Position: Labor Relations

Pick a decade, any decade. From secretaries in miniskirts in the "Mad Men"-style 1960s to Southwest Airlines' "hostesses" in hot pants in the "liberated" 1970s to the present-day surge of provocatively dressed young female service workers--the ubiquitous "Hooter Girl," for example--University at Buffalo (N.Y.) professor of law Dianne Avery has a name for it all. "The Great American Makeover: The

Up and Dumbing Down of Women's Work" is the subject of her ongoing research on the sexualization and commnodification of female service workers.

According to Avery, for many years employers have cashed in on service workers' sexuality by dictating what they wear on the job. The only difference between what happened decades ago and now, she contends, is the scale and sophistication of the industry of image consultants, uniform designers, and manufacturers who deliver the corporate brand through dress codes and mass-produced outfits. Not only is the influence of image consultants and uniform designers stronger and more comprehensive than one boss' questionable taste, but workers have had little success in resisting sex-based dress codes through antidiscrimination law or union grievances, Avery contends.

Another difference: the frontline service workers who are pressured to wear clothes that send strong sexual messages to their customers are getting younger and younger, often not yet out of their teens. "It's everywhere," laments Avery, who points to the airline, hotel, restaurant, and entertainment industries. "The issue of workplace appearance, dress, grooming, and dress codes has never been more important or significant. What I have seen in the last decade is a return to the attempts to sexualize certain kinds of front-line service jobs and to 'gender' them. By that, I mean making certain kinds of women's jobs or shunting women into certain kinds of work, to...