From today' Blooberg.com:
April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Corri Fetman doesn’t act like a victim of anything, least of all sex.
Famous for her “Life’s Short. Get a Divorce” billboard with photos of a lingerie-clad woman’s torso (hers) and a man’s bare chest (her personal trainer’s), Fetman works as a hard- charging divorce lawyer in Chicago. Really.
With a body that brings to mind Dolly Parton, Fetman, 45, has posed nude for Playboy magazine and last year penned a Playboy.com advice column called Lawyer of Love.
This isn’t a woman whose shell pink ears would blush at an off-color joke. She wouldn’t suffer shock if a man expressed an interest in, um, getting to know her better.
This is a woman who invites sexual fantasy, in fact, who has used it to promote herself professionally.
So the news that she sued a former boss at Playboy.com for unwelcome sexual advances warrants attention. Can this self-made playmate-lawyer complain when a supervisor gropes her, tries to use his job to bed her, harasses her and then fires her when she says no?
Of course she can. That’s a line illegal to cross, whether the object of desire works as a librarian or a Playboy bunny.
“I don’t believe that anyone should be subjected to the type of pervasive and ongoing harassment that I experienced at Playboy,” she said over the telephone yesterday.
Her 31-page complaint, filed this week in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago against her ex-boss, Thomas Hagopian, and Playboy Enterprises International, reads as if Hagopian was caught in a fantasy world himself.
Recalling Hefner
“Remember, I am the Hef of online,” he wrote in a January 2008 e-mail to her, now Exhibit A of her lawsuit. Hef, of course, refers to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, famous for maintaining a harem of buxom beauties at his Playboy mansion in Los Angeles.
“I just don’t have the Mansion with all the pink PJs for my girlfriends
,” the e-mail said.
The complaint says Hagopian claimed complete power over her from October 2007, when the company began discussing her writing, until he fired her in July 2008.
He promised her “continuous and repeated press and publicity,” including paid Playboy photo shoots and invitations to Playboy events and mansion parties, the suit claims.
She says these were false promises made to gain control of her for purposes of sex and romance. He propositioned her in person and in sometimes-vulgar e-mail. He bought lingerie for her to model for him. He would insist on dinner meetings for business discussions where he would touch her leg or climb in the car with her afterwards to grope her, the lawsuit says.
Emotional Distress
When she said no, he called her ungrateful and worse. She suffered emotional distress, she says, unable to focus on work.
Married with children, Hagopian worked as general manager of digital media for Playboy. He fired her last July after Fetman kept rebuffing him. A few months later, toward the end of last year, Hagopian left Playboy for reasons the company won’t disclose, a Playboy spokeswoman said.
Fetman’s dismissal violated her contract with Playboy, which had agreed to run her column throughout 2008 and which didn’t give proper notice of her termination, her lawsuit says.
She’s asking for $4.5 million for “gender violence” and alleged intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraudulent misrepresentations and breach of contract.
“We take these allegations very seriously,” Playboy spokeswoman Elizabeth Austin said. The company has begun an internal investigation and has “no interest in trying this case in the press,” she said.
Out of Touch
As for Hagopian, I was unable to find a telephone number for him in the Chicago area, much less get his side of the story. I also couldn’t reach two lawyers who I was told might represent him.
I don’t discount the possibility that the lawsuit is aimed more at generating publicity than seeking justice. We know this woman likes attention.
You can read all about her at the Fetman, Garland & Associates Web site. Click on Playboy Press and you can read Chicago Magazine’s 2002 story headlined: “When a Man Needs a Woman” -- as a divorce lawyer, that is. Last November Bench- Mark ran a feature on her called, “My Attorney is a Centrefold.”
Her use of sex as a promotional tool wins her no friends among women who strive to be taken seriously in the workforce. Men need no help from us when it comes to reducing women to sex objects.
But if her claims are true, she is, indeed, a victim fully deserving of the protection of the law.
Any woman can dress herself and conduct herself as provocatively as the law and her employer allow. But that doesn’t mean she is issuing a general invitation to any and every man who comes within range to touch her if he gets the urge.
It certainly doesn’t give her boss the green light to demand sex or end her job.
So NO means NO?
April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Corri Fetman doesn’t act like a victim of anything, least of all sex.
Famous for her “Life’s Short. Get a Divorce” billboard with photos of a lingerie-clad woman’s torso (hers) and a man’s bare chest (her personal trainer’s), Fetman works as a hard- charging divorce lawyer in Chicago. Really.
With a body that brings to mind Dolly Parton, Fetman, 45, has posed nude for Playboy magazine and last year penned a Playboy.com advice column called Lawyer of Love.
This isn’t a woman whose shell pink ears would blush at an off-color joke. She wouldn’t suffer shock if a man expressed an interest in, um, getting to know her better.
This is a woman who invites sexual fantasy, in fact, who has used it to promote herself professionally.
So the news that she sued a former boss at Playboy.com for unwelcome sexual advances warrants attention. Can this self-made playmate-lawyer complain when a supervisor gropes her, tries to use his job to bed her, harasses her and then fires her when she says no?
Of course she can. That’s a line illegal to cross, whether the object of desire works as a librarian or a Playboy bunny.
“I don’t believe that anyone should be subjected to the type of pervasive and ongoing harassment that I experienced at Playboy,” she said over the telephone yesterday.
Her 31-page complaint, filed this week in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago against her ex-boss, Thomas Hagopian, and Playboy Enterprises International, reads as if Hagopian was caught in a fantasy world himself.
Recalling Hefner
“Remember, I am the Hef of online,” he wrote in a January 2008 e-mail to her, now Exhibit A of her lawsuit. Hef, of course, refers to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, famous for maintaining a harem of buxom beauties at his Playboy mansion in Los Angeles.
“I just don’t have the Mansion with all the pink PJs for my girlfriends
,” the e-mail said. The complaint says Hagopian claimed complete power over her from October 2007, when the company began discussing her writing, until he fired her in July 2008.
He promised her “continuous and repeated press and publicity,” including paid Playboy photo shoots and invitations to Playboy events and mansion parties, the suit claims.
She says these were false promises made to gain control of her for purposes of sex and romance. He propositioned her in person and in sometimes-vulgar e-mail. He bought lingerie for her to model for him. He would insist on dinner meetings for business discussions where he would touch her leg or climb in the car with her afterwards to grope her, the lawsuit says.
Emotional Distress
When she said no, he called her ungrateful and worse. She suffered emotional distress, she says, unable to focus on work.
Married with children, Hagopian worked as general manager of digital media for Playboy. He fired her last July after Fetman kept rebuffing him. A few months later, toward the end of last year, Hagopian left Playboy for reasons the company won’t disclose, a Playboy spokeswoman said.
Fetman’s dismissal violated her contract with Playboy, which had agreed to run her column throughout 2008 and which didn’t give proper notice of her termination, her lawsuit says.
She’s asking for $4.5 million for “gender violence” and alleged intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraudulent misrepresentations and breach of contract.
“We take these allegations very seriously,” Playboy spokeswoman Elizabeth Austin said. The company has begun an internal investigation and has “no interest in trying this case in the press,” she said.
Out of Touch
As for Hagopian, I was unable to find a telephone number for him in the Chicago area, much less get his side of the story. I also couldn’t reach two lawyers who I was told might represent him.
I don’t discount the possibility that the lawsuit is aimed more at generating publicity than seeking justice. We know this woman likes attention.
You can read all about her at the Fetman, Garland & Associates Web site. Click on Playboy Press and you can read Chicago Magazine’s 2002 story headlined: “When a Man Needs a Woman” -- as a divorce lawyer, that is. Last November Bench- Mark ran a feature on her called, “My Attorney is a Centrefold.”
Her use of sex as a promotional tool wins her no friends among women who strive to be taken seriously in the workforce. Men need no help from us when it comes to reducing women to sex objects.
But if her claims are true, she is, indeed, a victim fully deserving of the protection of the law.
Any woman can dress herself and conduct herself as provocatively as the law and her employer allow. But that doesn’t mean she is issuing a general invitation to any and every man who comes within range to touch her if he gets the urge.
It certainly doesn’t give her boss the green light to demand sex or end her job.
So NO means NO?
