Do the graduates of girls' colleges hunt jobs the wrong way? Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, advertising director of Manhattan's Gimbels department store ("Nobody but nobody undersells Gimbels") thinks they do. Last week, speaking in Manhattan to the deans and placement directors of 100 women's colleges, Adwoman Fitz-Gibbon, who can make Broadway slang sell girdles, gave them some breezy advice on job-hunting.
"First," she began, "aim high in your appeal . . . Get in touch directly . . . with the top industrial giants. You know . . . someone who can take three hours for lunch . . . Now what is that type of employer looking for in a secretary? Shorthand speed? Dependability? Industry? Don't be silly! First and foremost, he's looking for a LOOKER ... Of course, this preoccupation with pulchritude on the part of the employer may not be noble and high-minded . . . But there it is . . . It's sex. You can't fight it.
"Now, what to do? Well, you select an appetizing package with a good profile all the way and a face like an old Gainsborough . . . You might develop a few slogans to put across your more exciting products:
HERE'S HOLYOKE'S HOTTEST . . .
HANDLE WITH ASBESTOS GLOVES
BARNARD GRADUATES
HAVE THE EQUIPMENT
SMITH GIRLS ARE GIRLIER GIRLS
"Does this mean that every top executive ... is a lecherous old wolf? ... Of course it doesn't. Your graduates will be perfectly safe . . . But it does mean that your intelligent, attractive girl will have a well-paid job till she marries . . . Your lovely looker will move into a stuffy tycoon's office and unstuff the stuffy."
The big trouble today, concluded Adwoman Fitz-Gibbon, is that too many college placement bureaus never dream of putting their brightest liberal-arts graduates into "lush" secretarial jobs or the retail-store business, but send them into "fusty, dusty publishing houses ... I think the reason you people steer them there—one college places a full third of its graduates in jobs of that type—is because of our American Puritanical background. If it was hard and dull and didn't pay much, it was good for you, and the harder and duller and littler it paid, the more respectable it must be. I don't agree. There's nothing immoral about getting into the big money. Sophie Tucker said: 'I've been poor and I've been rich. And believe me, rich is best.' "