Bad Optics

Grooming

…or “not a good look”, as people used to say.

While slouching through the usual dreck on Teh Intarwebz the other day, I came upon an article which was a thinly-veiled sales schtick for this charmingly-named self-help book:

In fairness, there was an asterisk placed strategically to bowdlerize the Bad Word, but I hate them because I’m not interested in having to slow my reading down to decipher Rosetta Stone-type glyphs inserted into words to prevent people with delicate sensibilities from assuming the principal characteristic of fainting goats.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.  This is.

Underneath the book cover was a pic of the author:

…no doubt, he took up his legal career after a stint in the Merchant Navy, or, as his name implies, after realizing that grave-digging didn’t have good prospects what with this Kubota stuff becoming all the rage in modern cemetery operations.

Now I’m somewhat famous for hating the way that people dress in the modern, oh-so casual world (to say nothing of body art), and I’m sure that this publicity pic Sexton has chosen must appeal to love-starved women seeking a way out from their joyless marital unions.

And I know that very few lawyers nowadays go to the office looking like Harvey Specter from the Suits  TV show (more’s the pity).

But seriously?

Sorry, but I can’t take “high stakes” as a description for a lawyer with full sleeve tattoos, in a pic.  For Mike Tyson and his ilk, hell yeah.  For a lawyer?  No.

Come back Harvey, all is forgiven.

7 comments

  2. I think your description of the picture being targeted at “love-starved women” is accurate. This book is aimed squarely at women.

    Who will buy it, not open it, and hand to their husbands as a reading assignment.

    Because today’s Stronk Independent Wahmen could never do anything wrong and fuck up their own marriage.

  4. North America is so wrapped in its own nest that it does not appreciate how woke (and stupid) we appear to the rest of the world. As a retired ‘recovering litigator’, I had occasion to note things in the legal field in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. There, dress is the class indicator. The lawyers in the Attorney-General’s office wear *starched!* white shirts, with suits, and when attending court, their wing collar shirts and tabs are always pristine. I cannot say the same about all of the lawyers I ran across in court in Ontario. The AG office bodies, lawyers and others, were noticeably different from the tellers and managers of the Royal Bank of Canada branch on the main floor of their office building. Their dress announced their status. Personally I never minded having to appear gowned: it was my battle-rattle.
    North America has tossed out any indication of class through dress. And visible tattoos…. I did not watch ‘Suits’, but the clips I have seen make it clear that the producers/writers understood the dynamic of ‘big law’ as it is done, or was done.

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