Slender Bodies, or I thought I left all that behind me

Sandra de Helen
Jul 22, 2017 · 9 min read

When I was eighteen, I got my first white collar job. I lied about graduating from high school (I was kicked out for being pregnant at fifteen), but I scored the highest on the tests administered by the bank, and was hired to run the addressograph machine while Molly was on vacation. Molly taught me how to run that machine as well as the printing press and how to make photographic copies. This was 1962. Photocopier machines were not common in offices and banks until a few years later. I was still working at the bank when we got our first Xerox, and only bank officers were allowed to touch it.

Molly was the bank’s photocopier when I was hired, and I was honored to learn the process. One document at a time could be photographed. The photo was then developed, lightened or darkened, and enlarged. We then dried it and brought it to the bank officer who needed this important copy of what was usually a legal document.

Molly’s job was to create a metal addressograph plate for every new bank customer, to keep the plates on file, to make changes of address for customers as needed, and then to use the plates to run bank statements for all the customers with open accounts. Bank statements could not be made up far ahead of time in case of changes of address and new accounts.

Her workstation was quite large as it had to accommodate all the equipment and files. She spent her days sitting at the addressograph. Everything was clean, neat, and tidy. Molly was meticulous in her work.

By the time she left for vacation, I was well-trained and eager to show off my newly acquired skills. By the time she came back, I had not only kept up with her regular work, I had run statements ahead and addressed envelopes. She was not pleased. She thought I made her look bad.

Molly didn’t need to worry. I hadn’t tarnished her reputation, but I had made a name for myself. I was immediately promoted to Statement Teller and moved upstairs to the main floor of the bank. My salary was increased from $200 per month to $240. I had my own window, my own desk, and a new set of friends. When I was below stairs, I didn’t fit in with the upstairs women, and most of the women downstairs worked in the clearing department where checks were cleared, using enormous machines with ten-key calculators on them. Canceled checks were filed and kept until bank statement day. On that day everyone worked late. People gathered at tables to fold bank statements, associate the appropriate canceled checks, and put the entire thing into a pre-printed envelope for mailing.

Upstairs, my life changed. Now I was subject to the ten-point rule administered by our supervisor, Meredith. She was the bank manager and her desk was in the lobby, next to a switchboard run by Faye, who claimed to wear high heels even to do her housework. The ten-point rule was a system designed to make sure women were dressed appropriately for work. There were points for garments, points for shoes, and points for each piece of jewelry. We could not have less than eight points, nor more than ten. In addition, women were required (not expected, required) to wear dresses (or suits, or skirts and blouses), high heels (not less than 1 1/2 inches, not more than three inches), stockings (pantyhose weren’t common yet), a girdle, a bra, and a slip. If Meredith suspected you didn’t have on a girdle, she would slap you on the butt. I got slapped more than once, but I always wore a girdle. If you had on too many points, you could remove some jewelry, but if you had on too few, you were sent home.

When short skirts came into fashion, two of the women were often sent home to change. If Meredith had known about the rule they used in schools where a girl had to kneel and if her skirt didn’t touch the floor she was sent home, Meredith would certainly have used it. Instead, she used her eyes. If she didn’t approve of your attire, home you went. Every morning before we were allowed to clock in, we were inspected.

My job as Statement Teller was to hand out statements to customers who preferred to pick their up (and possibly avoid prying eyes at home?), to manage bank bags from commercial customers who dropped off their deposits at the bank every night and to file signature cards. The regular and savings bank tellers around me could also ask me to do other tasks, which I was happy to do. My window was next to the Savings Department, where two women tellers worked alongside one of the Vice Presidents (a man named Vern). I became friends with one of the women, Frankie, and carpooled with her until I moved to a different area of town. I was also friends with Darla from New Accounts, Nancy, from Transportation, and Margie, the young woman who got sent home for wearing too-short skirts.

Darla had the onerous job of typing up the daily report. This report went to all department heads and all the bank officers. There was an original and eleven carbon copies. It had to be error free. Darla could not go home until her report was delivered. A typing error could spell dismissal. I was one of the women who would read over her report to make sure it was error-free.

Nancy ran the entire Transportation Department herself. The bank had several enormous freight accounts. There was accounting, billing, and other tasks involved with this job. She did her own bank statements for these customers. I got to know some of her customers because of managing the bank bags. I learned the name and account number of every one of my customers. For the freight customers, I also learned the numbers of their bank bags. Because of this, I got to be friends with Nancy. Anyone who treated her customers right was a friend of hers.

Darla and I got to be close friends. She soon learned my secret of an abusive husband. And I learned that her husband wasn’t actually married to her because he had another family in another city. As a truck driver, he easily maintained this sham so long as Darla didn’t tell anyone that she was not married and their daughter was not legitimate.

Nancy had a secret of her own. She was gay. She was also brilliant, and at age twenty-two, she became the first female bank officer. She had spent thousands of hours learning how to run the bank’s first computer, and with that computer was able to expand the services the bank could offer its freight customers, which in turn brought in more money for the bank. First, they gave her more employees, and a new office for herself and her staff, which was kept locked to keep people away from the computer. Second, they made her Vice President.

Before her ascension, she and Darla and I would go out together, drinking. My abusive husband didn’t come home until late on Friday nights, and when an opportunity presented itself, I went out with “the girls.”

I had another secret. I was being sexually harassed at the bank. All the regular tellers were men. The regular bank teller job was prestigious, and the salary that went with it was sufficient for a man to marry, raise a family, buy a house, drive a nice car, and send his children to college. Two of the men I worked with had been at Cass Bank for forty years. They were not the men who harassed me. One of the men made up payrolls for the bank’s commercial customers. I was assigned to help him, which I enjoyed very much. We were given the factory’s list of employees, their hours, and their hourly rates. We made up payroll packets with cash. On Friday afternoons beginning a few seconds after 4 pm, the men (they were all men) lined up to pick up their pay. The line came through the revolving doors but wound up the sidewalk for half a block. Many of the men would then move to another teller’s window and exchange ten or twenty dollars for one dollar bills so they could gamble.

My harasser worked the drive-up window. One of my jobs was to pick up his checks and deposits several times a day. I also had to bring him cash as needed, which he bought from the head teller. If there was no car at or approaching his window, I was safe. Otherwise, he would slide his hand up my skirt.

I kept a smile on my face, and I never asked to be excused from my duties that involved my going to the drive-up. At home, I was used and abused. Never was I approached as if I were attractive. Indeed, my husband frequently told me how ugly I was, naming my features one by one and denigrating them. The harasser told me he couldn’t help touching me because I was so beautiful.

I used the ten-point rule as a reason to buy a stiffer girdle, one without the split crotch, one with no access to my private parts.

The harassment went on for almost three years. This is the first time I have mentioned it. But it made me angry. I resented men who had so much power over me.

Three months before my twenty-first birthday, I was promoted to bank teller. Unlike the two women savings tellers, I would be given my own regular window. This entailed three months of training behind the window before I could open my own. I took evening classes in Principles of Banking, Economics, and Negotiable Instruments. I learned to identify counterfeit bills, how to cash savings bonds, and more. I counted money for the savings tellers. I learned how the tellers balanced their windows every day. By the time I opened my own window on my birthday in January 1965, I was able to handle my customers all day long without asking for help and to balance my drawer when the bank closed. That day after work, I went shopping at Famous Barr for two new winter coats. Because once again, I got a raise.

In February after I turned twenty-one, I left my husband. He came to the bank and made a scene, but Vern called the police and had him arrested. My husband did not return to the bank. And Vern offered to give me rides back and forth to my new place, to keep me safe from my husband.

Frankie had confided in me that Vern had a habit of feeling her up as she worked. Because they were all in the same long cage together, he could walk up behind her, speak to the customer, and rub her ass while she pretended nothing was happening. I was furious to know that what I had been experiencing from the drive-up teller was also happening to Frankie right out in the front lobby. Just when I thought I was safe from the other guy, now I knew Vern might do something as well.

I immediately stopped riding with Vern and returned to riding the bus. I was taking no chances.

One Friday when I was working until 7 pm, as we stayed open late those days, Vern came up behind me. I was sitting on a stool, resting my high-heeled feet, and facing the window, helping a customer. Vern put his hand on my rear-end. I swiveled on the stool to face Vern. I looked him in the eye and said in a low voice, “Take your hand off my ass right now, or I will scream.” I sat there until he removed his hand, turned around, and walked away. Then I turned back to my customer and carried on with the task at hand.

After six months as a teller, I left the job at Cass Bank. I threw out my girdles and vowed to never wear one again. Even looking at a girdle reminded me of those years at Cass Bank and the shame I felt for having put up with the harassment.

Half a century has passed since then. I had other jobs where I was harassed, but I complained. I resisted. I spoke up. Five years after I left Cass Bank, women were allowed to wear pants to work. I wore pants. I wore flat shoes. If I wore a skirt, a dress, or a suit, it was my choice. If I put on high heels, it was my choice.

Last week, my daughter and I went to the mall to see a movie. On the way, we passed a store called “Slender Bodies.” It was filled with nothing but so-called shapewear. Not pretty, not fancy, but either black or tan. Racks and racks of — girdles.

If women are wearing girdles again, is it because they feel it is their choice? Or the patriarchy still at work? Jobs may not require girdles, but society’s beauty standards require women to be objects that please the male gaze.

I thought I had left that behind me. I am not being harassed by a male teller or bank officer, but my psyche is being harassed by shapewear and all it represents.

I am screaming.

Sandra de Helen

Written by

Author of the Shirley Combs/Dr. Watson series. Reading mystery inspires discovery of your own. #SherlockHolmes #Playwright #poet http://SandradeHelen.com