A lawsuit-in-waiting

I’ve been travelling.  More on that later.  Before I left, however, I managed to catch the Yankees in a 2-1 victory over Oakland.  Great game.  Low-scoring fast-moving pitchers’ duel.  Oakland’s second-baseman tried to fake a throw to first and wound up looking like a minor-leaguer to the uninformed. 

Didn't hurt that I was, for the first time in my life, watching from a luxury box with an Army colonel and a professional opera singer, among others.  As the opera singer’s brother said:  “It's like having the world’s greatest hi-def television.”  Plus Italian sausage and all the beer you could drink.

After all that luxury, we hadda go get some pizza (and more beer) over on 157th Street.  And what did we see?

The sign below the green Presidente neon logo reads, literally, “Proper-looking young women needed to work.”

The usual figurative reading of “proper-looking,” however, isn’t “proper-looking.”  It’s “white.”  Or at the very least, “white enough for the person doing the hiring.” 

I must be missing a joke.  Right?  This is the 21st century. 

At least there’s a “For Sale” sign on the door. 

Here's a close up of the offending sign:

Comments

[Will Baird]

Whoa.

And that's not a good whoa.

[Noel Maurer]

It's hard to see even if you double-click the picture to see the blow-up, but the poster has some photographs of "proper-looking" women along the bottom. Just in case you don't know what they mean, I suppose.

[Jussi Jalonen]

My interpretation of "proper-looking" would have been simply "pretty" or "young".

Which is another form of discrimination, of course, but sometimes, good looks actually are a part of the work. And they don't hurt when you're selling a pizza, either; pretty girls usually attract customers.

But, since Noel's conclusion seemed quite firm, I guess I'm just no good in detecting racism. So, since I'm not an American, could someone tell me what am _I_ missing?

Cheers,

J. J.

[Noel Maurer]

Nobody? Okay, I'll step up.

Jussi, I don't think that you're missing anything. Phrases have overtones that vary from society to society.

In the Dominican Republic, the phrase "buena presencia" has a fairly clear racial meaning.

Other countries vary. In Cuba, I've read, the phrase has the Dominican meaning.

In El Salvador, not at all. The phrase means "attractive," just as you interpreted it. Ditto Mexico, although it gets a little complicated.

In New York, the Caribbean meaning predominates. Certainly in that part of the Bronx, it does. Leastways that's what we figured when we saw the sign.

If you blow up the picture (just click on it) you can make out illustrations of what the sign-maker considered to be "good-looking."

I suspect a joke, to be honest. Anyone else?

[Jussi Jalonen]

I did zoom the picture as close as possible, but it still doesn't really show the girls accurately enough.

All I can see is that they have black hair, and a skin colour that I'd associate with people of Central/Latin American descent. You saw the pictures close, so you can tell if I'm guessing right.

Inasmuch as I have any kind of a scale on these matters, those ladies would register as having Caucasian origins, but still definitely of the more exotic sort.

Cheers,

J. J.

[Noel Maurer]

I've added a close-up below the fold. The two women on the left have blond hair, while the one on the right looks to have more dirty-blonde light-brown.

I'm still not sure that this was serious. The next time that I'm in New York, I'll check.