A female bank employee has claimed she was fired from finance giant Citibank for dressing too provocatively.
Debrahlee Lorenzana (33) told the New York Post newspaper she wore ordinary clothes, but her male bosses and co-workers still found her too alluring.
“Everything I wore was professional, things everybody wears in corporate America,” she said. “The way they looked at what I wore was very disappointing.”
She started as a business banking officer in a New York branch in September 2008 and shortly afterwards male bosses began making sexist comments about her appearance, according to her employment case papers filed in a Manhattan court.
She was told “she must refrain from wearing certain items of clothing, in particular, turtleneck tops, pencil skirts, fitted business suits, or other properly tailored clothing,” the suit says.
“In blatantly discriminatory fashion, plaintiff was advised that as a result of the shape of her figure, such clothes were purportedly ‘too distracting’ for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear.”
The single mother said “that other female colleagues wore similar professional attire,” and that some dressed far more provocatively, the paper said.
But her bosses said that those women were unattractive and did not count.
She was also told that “as a result of her tall stature, coupled with her curvaceous figure, she should not wear classic high-heeled business shoes, as this purportedly drew attention to her body in a manner that was upsetting to her easily distracted male managers.”
Citibank said: “We believe this lawsuit is without merit and we will defend against it vigorously.”
AP