Public Eye Female Chauvinist Pigs?

By MARGARET CARLSON

It's got sex, power and -- as an extra added attraction -- that other American obsession, dieting. It's the reverse-discrimination suit filed by eight men from Boston who found the Jenny Craig weight-loss organization too full of, well, female chauvinist pigs. The girl talk in the office, says plaintiff Joseph Egan, about "who to marry, who is pregnant, how to get pregnant" was offensive, and it was sexist to ask his male colleagues to shovel the snow and insensitive to tell another he was "sensitive for a guy." These men found themselves on a slower track than their female colleagues, and so some of them quit, others were laid off and all of them filed complaints. Last week three of the plaintiffs cleared the first hurdle: the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination determined that there was probable cause of gender bias and ordered mediation. The other five are awaiting action.

All are in great demand, however, and not by accident. The first thing they did, after hiring an all-female team of lawyers, was hire a public-relations firm, which alerted the press about the case before the commission ruling. Although last year, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, women filed 11,000 sexual-harassment complaints and men fewer than 1,000, this case made the front page of the Wall Street Journal the next day. And before you could say sweeps week, the Today show, Entertainment Tonight, A Current Affair and CBS This Morning, among others, were on the phone to the men's Boston publicist, Paul Dugan. There was much debate among the advisers about how high or low to go on the media food chain -- should the guys go for a slam dunk with a supersensitive host like Maury Povich or risk potentially tough questions on network programs? But not to worry. After accepting air fare and hotel accommodations to appear on Today last week, three of the Jenny Craig Eight, prepped like witnesses at the Simpson trial, came off like a bunch of wounded Alan Aldas, shocked -- shocked -- to be exposed to off-color comments.

Now, there should be nothing wrong with this picture: as women gain power, they may misuse it and sex, as badly as some men. In fact, sexual harassment won't really be taken seriously until it affects men. But the sheer inequality of attention to this case -- as opposed to the other 91% of cases filed by women that do not happen to involve a sitting President or a U.S. Supreme Court nominee -- can also be seen as one more example of the inequality that made antidiscrimination laws necessary in the first place. All this attention also suggests a man who is sexually harassed has a greater claim on our sympathies -- a notion coming this week to a Multiplex near you in Disclosure, a movie in which predatory executive Demi Moore accosts sweet, sensitive Michael Douglas. Jenny Craig plaintiff Tracy Tinkham looks more like Joey Buttafuoco than Michael Douglas, but never mind. Perhaps he was succeeding handsomely at counseling overweight women and should have been promoted instead of being let go for breaking a trivial rule. We are asked to believe that these men's having to listen to jokes about push-up bras or being asked to lift a heavy box makes for a winning case and worldwide media attention, when women have been listening to penis jokes and making coffee for decades. Sure, complaints about failing to be promoted simply because they were men in a women's world are serious. But before the Jenny Craig Eight pour their heart out to Sally Jessy Raphael, they should check with all the women who have looked up the corporate ladder and seen 10 men for every woman and wondered how they could prove their lack of success was due to some failure in the corporate culture, and not in themselves.