I realize that being hung over makes writing even more interesting, though I am not sure if I can say it\u2019s interesting for the readers!<\/p>\n
As I sit in the salon while my hair stylist works his magic on my hair, I think about the time \u00a0I spent shampooing, conditioning, getting my hair styled, ironed, colored, etc, etc. Do I think it\u2019s a waste of time? \u2013 nah, not at all, as I love long hair. This leads me to thinking that though I hate generalizations, most successful women in the corporate world have short hair!<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take Fortune\u2019s list of most powerful women in the world and you will see what I mean:<\/p>\n
1.\tIndra Nooyi \u2013 Chairman and CEO, Pepsico
\n2.\tIrene Rosenfeld \u2013 Chairman and CEO, Kraft foods
\n3.\tPat Woertz \u2013 Chairman, CEO and President, Archer Daniels Midland
\n4.\tAngela Braly \u2013 President and CEO, Wellpoint
\n5.\tEllen Kullman \u2013 CEO, DuPont
\n6.\tCarol Bartz \u2013 CEO, Yahoo
\n7.\tUrsula Burns \u2013 CEO, Xerox
\n8.\tBrenda Barnes \u2013 Chairman and CEO, Sara Lee
\n9.\tSafra Catz \u2013 Co-President, Oracle
\n10.\tAnn Livermore \u2013 EVP, Technology Solutions, Hewlett-Packard
\n11.\tSheri McCoy \u2013 Worldwide Chairman, Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson
\n12.\tMelanie Healey \u2013 Group president, Global feminine and health care, P & G
\n13.\tAnne Sweeney – Co-Chair, Disney Media Networks and president, Disney\/ABC Television Group, Walt Disney
\n14.\tHeidi Miller – CEO, Treasury & Securities Services, JPMorgan Chase
\n15.\tColleen Goggins – Worldwide chairman, Consumer Group, Johnson & Johnson<\/p>\n
Each of the above listed powerful women has short hair.<\/strong> Even Hillary Clinton and Australia’s first woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard have short hair. Now let\u2019s take a look closer home: Vinita Bali, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Naina Lal Kidwai, Anu Aga, Shikha Sharma, Kalpana Morparia, Lalita Gupte are the ones that come to mind immediately and each one of them again has short hair.<\/p>\n Notable exceptions are Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO, Avon (being a cosmetics company) Chanda Kocchhar and Renuka Ramnath. Even the ones I see climbing up the corporate ladder have short hair \u2013 I mentioned this to one of the senior managers I work with (she has very short hair) and she said my observation was not completely off the mark.<\/p>\n Let us understand how hair can play truant when one is trying to create a serious impression \u2013 if in a meeting, while thinking about something, you absent mindedly play with your hair, chances are you wont be taken very seriously, specially by your male colleagues \u2013 not to forget getting disapproving glances from female colleagues who may think you are using your \u201clooks\u201d. Playing with hair is the one of the signs of flirting and sometimes women touch their hair subconsciously without even realizing it. Besides the risk of appearing overtly feminine, one also has to maintain hair \u2013 the time and effort spent is worth the final result \u2013 but successful and busy high flying women may not have the time, patience and inclination to style long hair when they could be making millions for the company. It is estimated that women spend 2.5 years and USD 50,000 caring for hair during their lifetime. Hair is something that ranks right up their with waist-to-hip ratio when it comes to men getting attracted to women. Hair is something that makes women feel feminine and can even help change personalities, depending on hair cut and hair color (as banked on by Loreal).<\/p>\n Of course, nowadays men too spend more time in grooming and getting dressed. So sometimes, for the women, more than saving time, it\u2019s all about exuding power or trying to appear more masculine \u2013 to be more accepted in a largely male dominated corporate world \u2013 which may explain how pant suits may also find more favor with such women than dresses.<\/p>\n Also if your male colleague goes bald, you may hardly give it a thought but just imagine if your female colleague went bald \u2013 you would find that shocking, wouldn\u2019t you? Women are sometimes under tremendous pressure to look a certain way; men can get away with a lot \u2013 though times are changing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I realize that being hung over makes writing even more interesting, though I am not sure if I can say it\u2019s interesting for the readers! As I sit in the salon while my hair stylist works his magic on my hair, I think about the time \u00a0I spent shampooing, conditioning, getting my hair styled, ironed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[258,915,932,2136],"class_list":["post-1041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-beauty","tag-grooming","tag-hair","tag-successful-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7AOU2-gN","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}