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Today the NYT is featuring an article entitled: "Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales," by Stephanie Saul. Here is the opening sentence:

"As an ambitious college student, Cassie Napier had all the right moves - flips, tumbles, an ever-flashing America's sweetheart smile - to prepare for her job after graduation. She became a drug saleswoman."

The article has a weird tone, which seems at times unnecessarily disparaging of cheerleaders, such as this paragraph:

"Known for their athleticism, postage-stamp skirts and persuasive enthusiasm, cheerleaders have many qualities the drug industry looks for in its sales force. Some keep their pompoms active, like Onya, a sculptured former college cheerleader. On Sundays she works the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection."

The reader later learns this about Onya: "Onya, the Redskins cheerer (who asked that her last name be withheld, citing team policy), has her picture on the team's Web site in her official bikinilike uniform and also reclining in an actual bikini. Onya, 27, who declined to identify the company she works for, is but one of several drug representatives who have cheered for the Redskins, according to a spokeswoman for the team, Melanie Treanor."

If Onya won't even disclose the identity of the company she works for, why would she have specified her client base or the product she pushes? So the assertion earlier that "weekdays find her urging gynecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection" may be true, or may be made up out of thin air to link cheerleaders and vaginal yeast infections in readers' minds, possibly because doing so maliciously amuses the article author and her editors.

The article suggests that cheerleaders are hired by drug companies because they are atractive and flirtatious and can ply their feminine wiles on male doctors and get them to write prescriptions they otherwise wouldn't have. Here's a sample:

"Ms. Napier, the former Kentucky cheerleader, said she was so concerned about the cute-but-dumb stereotype when she got her job that she worked diligently to learn about her product, Prevacid.

"In an interview, Mr. Reidy remembered a sales call with the "all-time most attractive, coolest woman in the history of drug repdom." At first, he said, the doctor "gave ten reasons not to use one of our drugs." But, Mr. Reidy added: "She gave a little hair toss and a tug on his sleeve and said, 'Come on, doctor, I need the scrips.' He said, 'O.K., how do I dose that thing?' I could never reach out and touch a female physician that way."

The article further implies that the cheerleaders hired as drug reps aren't very bright (e.g. "Dr. Dan Foster, a West Virginia surgeon and lawmaker who said he was reacting to the attractive but sometimes ill-informed drug representatives who came to his office, introduced a bill to require them to have science degrees. Dr. Foster's legislation was not adopted, but it helped inspire a new state regulation to require disclosure of minimum hiring requirements."); that less attractive women, and men, get discriminated against (e.g. "Federal law bans employment discrimination based on factors like race and gender, but it omits appearance from the list." and "...Dr. Carli, at the University of Michigan, said that seduction appeared to be a deliberate industry strategy. And with research showing that pharmaceutical sales representatives influence prescribing habits, the industry sales methods are drawing criticism."); and that doctors sometimes want sex from the cheerleaders ("Stories abound about doctors who mistook a sales pitch as an invitation to more. A doctor in Washington pleaded guilty to assault last year and gave up his license after forcibly kissing a saleswoman on the lips. One informal survey, conducted by a urologist in Pittsburgh, Dr. James J. McCague, found that 12 of 13 medical saleswomen said they had been sexually harassed by physicians. Dr. McCague published his findings in the trade magazine Medical Economics under the title "Why Was That Doctor Naked in His Office?")

I'm left wondering whether this is part of the NYT's campaign against uppity women, (see also Sheezlebub), or evidence of sexism of a different sort, an attempt to insult and marginalize women who have chosen to succeed within the patriarchy, on traditional terms. The idea that beautiful, flirtatious drug representatives "persuade" (short of explicitly exchanging sex for 'scrips, which, it is implied, actually happens also) doctors to write prescriptions that are not driven by the merits of the pharmaceutical product is certainly alarming, as the piece apparently intends it to be. Yet I have a hard time believing that this happens nearly as often as doctors writing unnecessary or unwarranted prescriptions because drug companies offer them goodies, or lie to them about the efficacy of their drugs, or because consumers are persuaded by advertising (that appears in places like the New York Times) to explicitly request certain drugs.

Like so much lousy NYT reportage, there are few facts and little data used to illustrate the scope of the "problem" that the article putatatively identifies, and I can't even tell for sure which problem the reader is supposed to be most troubled by; the fact that dumb beautiful female cheerleaders earn good salaries ("There's a lot of sizzle in it," said Mr. Webb. "I've had people who are going right out, maybe they've been out of school for a year, and get a car and make up to $50,000, $60,000 with bonuses, if they do well." Compensation sometimes goes well into six figures.") by taking advantage of male doctors who write unnecessary or ill advised prescriptions because they expect (but are unlikely to receive - or are they?) sexual favors, or the fact that male doctors write such prescriptions. The article gives me the impression that the cheerleaders are mostly to blame. Here's the conclusion of the piece:

"For her part, Ms. Napier, the TAP Pharmaceutical saleswoman, says it is partly her local celebrity that gives her a professional edge. On the University of Kentucky cheering squad, Ms. Napier stood out for her long dark hair and tiny physique that landed her atop human pyramids.

"If I have a customer who is a real big U.K. fan, we'll have stories to tell each other," Ms. Napier said. "If they can remember me as the cheerleader - she has Prevacid - it just allows you do to so many things."

I guess we are supposed to be concerned about some of those "many things" Ms. Napier might be doing. But I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over it. I worry a lot more about the misogynist social engineering the NYT seems to be engaging in with articles like this.