Sexual stereotypes are acceptable, as long as they portray women as superior to men. That's the takeaway from Cathy Horyn's feminist hyperventilating over two female fashion design icons on the front of Thursday's Styles section, keyed on a new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called “Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: Impossible Conversations.”
In "The Edge Goes to the Women," Horyn wrote "Could it be that women, despite being outnumbered by male stars, are better designers than men?" The front of the section was dominated by a graphic showing the two designers with speech bubbles. Schiaparelli is portrayed saying "Women are better designers than men," while Prada replies "I know!"
In similar sexist fashion, the headline over a July 26, 2009 interview with Carol Smith, senior vice president of the fashion magazine Elle, read "No Doubts: Women Are Better Managers."
Former Harvard President Larry Summers must be wondering where he went wrong. After Summers, then-president of Harvard, suggested at a 2005 conference that the low number of women in the field science may have something to do with genetics, the Times hounded him through several articles, culminating in his resignation the next year.
