Men are notorious for their inability get over the fact that women have mammary glands. It’s just so distracting! But here’s an example with an added twist: A 29-year-old woman is claiming she was fired from a Manhattan lingerie shop because its male owners were uncomfortable with her large assets.
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Lauren Odes, who performed data entry and shipping tasks at the Native Intimates boutique in Manhattan’s garment district, says her superiors asked her to tape down her breasts and wear baggy t-shirts. At one point, she was asked to don a red bathrobe and wear it all day at her desk. Later that day, she was fired. “Given their business product, I simply did not understand why I was told that I was quote ‘too hot,’” Odes told reporters. “When I was first told that…that my breasts were too large I was shocked,” she said in a statement released Tuesday.
Odes says her supervisor informed her that the shop’s Orthodox Jewish owners (male, natch) didn’t appreciate her busty appearance. “I do not feel any employer has the right to impose their religious belief on me when I’m working in a business that is not a synagogue,” she told reporters this week.
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Now, Odes is bringing out the big guns: her case has been taken up by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, who has fought similar cases in the past — in 2010 she represented a banker who claimed she was fired for allegedly distracting male employees with her form-fitting office wear. Allred and Odes have decided to sue for gender and religious discrimination because, as MSNBC helpfully informs us, “being too hot is not a protected category under the nation’s labor laws.”