Did you really just say that?

I was recently at a store and a Baby Boomer-aged man came up to chat for a moment.

“When are you going to hire another woman?”

Not an unreasonable question, since our staff has been down by one and our weather team currently consists of four guys. I replied that we happen to have a female meteorologist joining us next month.

He came back with something along the lines of “good, we need somebody to look at!”

I immediately felt uncomfortable and was thrown a back on my heels a bit. I stammered something about that having diversity is good because it provides different perspectives. Thankfully, the conversation ended and we both went our separate ways. (The fact that he was a store employee added to my discomfort.)

I’m sure that he felt his comment was nothing more than a joke, something innocuous. But it has been rolling around in my head in the days since then and it’s been bothering me. Many of my female colleagues work hard and give a rip about what they do, yet some people reduce them to whether or not they’re eye candy. That’s BS. Yes, we all acknowledge that, in media, how one appears is a reality that we have to deal with. But come on. The “something to look at” is not okay. There’s another subtlety to those words: something, not someone. Doubly not okay.

I can’t begin to figure out how women put up with this nonsense.