I once knowingly hired a young woman who had pink hair.

I didn’t know about the hair the day I interviewed her, because she was wearing a brown wig, but a colleague, who was researching her background online, found a photo and subsequently tipped me off. To the young lady’s credit, upon receiving an offer, she told us about her hair color and she offered to wear her wig to work if that was what I wanted.

I grew up in the 1960s. Hair was on a lot of people’s minds back then. The Beatles had a lot of that, and even made a now-classic Broadway musical about it. Personally, I don’t have as much as I used to, and what I do have has gone from black to gray, but I don’t think about it much. When my prospective employee asked me what she wanted her to do with her pink hair, I told her not to worry about it. She could wear it to work.

Maybe you have some stereotypical ideas about a young woman who dyes her hair pink. I know I did, and they were all wrong. This particular young man was not only extremely intelligent, but also shy, quiet, quite an introvert, actually, and a hard worker. He came from a top-tier school and had serious career ambitions. It turned out that my willingness to accept her for who she was made her feel much more comfortable working for my company. She was a perfect fit and I was very disappointed when she left us after about a year for graduate school on the West Coast.

It just so happened that this employee worked in an internal support capacity, not a customer service role. I recently got into a discussion with some of my younger colleagues about professionalism in general and pink hair specifically. We wonder if we would hire a customer service associate, who we typically expect to become a manager with extensive customer contact within a few years, who has pink hair, flashy tattoos, or more than the usual amount of hardware attached to her body. .

My coworkers were pretty evenly opposed. They don’t think these features look professional. I get your point, but then I remember how often stereotypes are misleading. So I’m wondering, “What’s professional anyway?”

Or to put it another way: don’t ask me questions and I won’t tell you lies.

Like many people, I find some forms of colloquial speech perfectly charming (UK “Received Pronunciation”), some barely tolerable (Boston, but then I grew up in New York), some grate on the ears (New York, despite I grew up there), and some just plain wrong, like using “hatchet” for “ask,” or George W. Bush’s inability to pronounce the word “nuclear” correctly.

NPR is having this same discussion with itself, as some journalists ask if public radio broadcasts sound “too white” and therefore presumably alienate other parties from the potential audience. (1) The discussion gained steam not only among journalists, but more widely on Twitter and other social media forums.

Of course I don’t have any answers about something as personal and subjective as this. But I have some opinions. Most of my concerns are practical: will a certain departure from tradition unduly get in the way of what we’re trying to achieve?

If NPR hosts suddenly start asking questions and expect interview subjects to respond, I’m going to waste a lot of energy trying to get over my perceived misuse of our common language. NPR is, after all, a national broadcaster. I am not surprised or critical if a Hawaiian radio host uses local or vernacular words in passing, because the audience gets it. But the same language in a national broadcast can create a barrier to understanding. If a local, cable, or Internet channel operates largely in non-standard English, I have no objection; Address your audience in the way that seems best to you. But standard English is standard for a reason.

On the other hand, what is vocally distracting is something in the ear of the viewer. Recently, female vocals, especially those belonging to young women, have been criticized for “vocal frying”, a squeaky lowering of pitch that certain listeners find irritating and unprofessional. But others have pointed out that there is no good evidence that the phenomenon is new or restricted to women. Ira Glass, the host of “This American Life” and owner of a voice often mentioned in the “voice of NPR” debate, mentioned in a recent story on vocal fry that he can hear the phenomenon in his own voice. . But he also observed that nobody has ever complained about it, except when they identify it in the reporters of the program. (2)

On the current hit show “The Americans,” actor Matthew Rhys plays a Russian KGB agent whose mission is to blend into American suburban life. He speaks standard American English at least as well as I do, and he sounds pretty much like he did in the earlier series “Brothers and Sisters,” which is set in Pasadena, California. But Rhys himself is Welsh; when he speaks with his own voice, he does so with the accent of his native region. He is fine at home, and fine when speaking as himself, even to an American audience. But he wouldn’t work in his dramatic roles given the characters’ background and background. We would spend all our time trying to get over his speech patterns, and we could never take his characters at face value. While an actor is a highly specialized example, the response to what he counts as “professional” in a given job is determined, at least in part, by the job itself.

Would my firm’s clients turn down a financial advisor with pink hair or flashy tattoos? Certainly many will wonder about it, and some will likely make judgments based on these superficial features. However, I have a lot of respect for the intelligence and consideration of my clients. Some might avoid an adviser who doesn’t look “professional” in stereotypes or standard form, but others would be inclined to judge an adviser more on the advice and service offered, and less on the appearance presented. Isn’t that what I want?

So I’m not ready to make too many hard rules. I have some standards, or maybe stereotypes, that I will insist on. Jeans are not allowed on non-holiday weekdays; no clothing that is simply inappropriate in a business environment. Do your best to correctly pronounce “ask” when we’re together. Give me that, and maybe I can skip a couple of tattoos.

Sources:

1) The Washington Post, “Is Public Radio Sounding Too ‘White’? NPR itself is trying to find the answer.”

2) This American Life, “Transcript, Episode 545: If you don’t have anything nice to say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS”