Had a dream last night that I had to fill out a government form:
The Ministry of Employment, together with StatsCan, was gathering information on workers & workplaces across Canada; so I had to fill in this form with my vital statistics, as it were...
...you see, there was this one page where I was asked to tick a box to indicate my bra cup size. It was explained on the form that the Gov't was going to correlate hiring/firing data with bra sizes to determine whether smaller~breasted women were indeed at a disadvantage in the job market.*
Now, the form had been asking some very personal questions up to this point, and I'd felt a bit sqeamish about the idea of the government knowing so much about me; and this question in particular gave me pause. It would be illegal for a prospective employer to ask me such things; is it okay for the Government to ask me this, even if it is supposedly for the better good?
Resigned, I picked up my stubby pencil to answer the question; and then realized that my cup size wasn't even an option. In true Gov't fashion {i.e., counter~intuitive}, the multiple choice answers were:
[A] D [B] C [C] B [D] Other (explain) _____________
~ ~ ~
* Cathy Jones, of This Hour fame, had a bit about this disadvantage in one of her gigs at the Just For Laughs festival; it went something to the effect of:
Apparently, breast implants are becoming more popular as a graduation gift for girls from their parents. And the parents are justifying it by saying, it's no different than a nose job; it's very competitive out in the job market these days, less attractive girls have a difficult time of it, so they need all the help they can get to gain the edge. Well... that's no justification, unless you're planning on your daughter being a live packing crate, or you want to get her a job preventing boats from hitting the pier...
Posted by edgar at November 3, 2003 08:55 AM