This week, we saw a radical game of reputation ping-pong played by some of Vanno’s key influencers.  It all started when nicemarmot posted this article, where the Huffington Post accused Bank of England of sexist behavior toward their female workers.  The story found on HuffPo was that high level execs had held a workshop for ladies, serving them with an ultimatum about proper attire.  Their guidelines included the following:

“Look professional, not fashionable; be careful with perfume; always wear a heel of some sort — maximum 2 inches; always wear some sort of makeup — even if it’s just lipstick.” Shoes and skirt must be the same color. No-no’s include ankle chains — “professional, but not the one you want to be associated with;” white high heels; overstuffed handbags; an overload of rings, and double-pierced ears.

(For the record- that WHOLE paragraph is directly from the source.  Note all the dashes and quotes, seems a little out of context, no?)

So, I read this article and like most Vannoers was shocked and irritated by the bigotry and voted down Bank of England’s reputation score.  (I mean, really- no flats? What century are you in?!)  Superstar shaunsayers didn’t, though.  Shaunsayers smelled a rat and conducted some private sleuthing of his own.  He actually contacted the PR department for Bank of England and they wrote back within the hour with this statement:

“…The facts are that an informal lunchtime gathering was organised [sic] by a women’s staff group at which an external company presented their ideas about building confidence. The session was provided free and had nothing to do with the Bank’s management. A list of ideas about dress was discussed by the consultant. Most Bank staff will not have seen this and those that have are free to treat it as they wish. Like many organisations, the Bank simply expects staff to wear smart business attire”

Shaunsayers submitted his findings to Vanno, showing a negative score for HuffPo and a positive one for BoE.  Then– and this is the best part– Sayers commented on the Huffington Post so he could share his findings at the source and maybe bring some objectivity to this biased and unfair piece of journalism crap.  Huffington Post not only didn’t respond, but They refused to publish his comment!!!! Talk about unacceptable- you have what is supposed to be an objective institution publishing lies and then refusing to allow rebuttle on their site, which goes against the entire point of journalism.

When Vanno user, emilyfields, heard about these shenanigans, she also submitted this portion of the story to Vanno as well at which point I went to the HuffPo article to look for the comment.  I didn’t find it.  But what I did find was a button that said, “Read Entire Article.” I had seen it before, but I clicked again which is when I noticed that the article had been syndicated.  Huffington Post had taken the article from New York Magazine (the friggin’ fashion section) and blindly republished.