I MAY as well warn you right now that this story is about black fishnet stockings. There’s a red feather in it, too. What can I say? Readers contact John Nichols about presidential elections. They contact me about cocktail waitress attire.
In this instance, a reader called my attention to a story about female executives in the business section of Sunday’s New York Times. Featured prominently was Carol Bartz, one of the first female CEOs in the country. Now retired, Bartz in the 1990s (and until last year) ran a hugely successful Silicon Valley high-tech company called Autodesk.
What caught the eye of my correspondent was this sentence: “After working her way through college at the University of Wisconsin in Madison as a cocktail waitress (required uniform: red miniskirt, black fishnets and red feather in hair), Ms. Bartz graduated with a computer science degree in 1971.”