Real Estate Mogul Barbara Corcoran Advises Businesswomen to Wear Shorter Skirts

Barbara Corcoran and a glimpse of her famous legs. (Photo: Getty Images)

Real estate magnate and Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran, who I know mostly from her occasional segments on the fourth hour of Today, pulled a classic tweet-and-delete earlier this week after sharing some dubious advice with her female followers.

“I find running a #business in a man’s world to be a huge advantage,” Corcoran, 67, wrote. “I wear bright colors, yank up my skirt + get attention.” According to CNN, she ended with the hashtag “#womeninbusiness.“

She later deleted the decidedly antifeminist tweet, but not before the damage was done. Eileen Carey, the co-founder of an enterprise software startup for women, called Glassbreakers, said Corcoran’s comments were the “opposite of progress,” adding, “We should be judged by our revenue and vision, not by what we wear.”

But in a twist of events, Corcoran is standing by her statement. “I totally believe what I said. And I’m frankly a little bit surprised by getting any reaction to it,” she told Good Morning America Thursday morning. “It’s nothing to do with what sex you are, you’ve really got to play up what you’ve got. I happen to have great legs. I didn’t have the best face always or the best body, but I have great legs. So if I want to get attention, and I still do it, I wear my skirts really high, I yank up my skirt at the midriff, and I walk into a room and everybody notices me because I’ve got great legs.”

Corcoran claims there’s nothing sexual about showing off your best attributes, and compares her leg-baring technique to a man wearing an expensive watch or driving a pricey vehicle — it’s all about using what you’ve got to get noticed.

“You’re judged by your numbers,” she told GMA. “But to get to those numbers, you’ve got to stand apart from the pack. You will never succeed being exactly like the next guy or gal because nobody will notice you and you’ll never get to that juicy balance sheet that every woman out there is hoping to get to.” She also said, “Assuming you have five people with equal intelligence working equally hard, the person who knows to grab attention is going to be the one that gets noticed and gets put ahead.”

It’s unclear, then, what caused Corcoran to delete her original tweet — but her message is unmistakable, regardless: In order to succeed, all businesses need proper marketing, even if that business is yourself. Oh, and you shouldn’t let an ill-fitting pantsuit get in the way of your success.

“I think it’s a wrong message to tell young women that they should look like the guys. I just don’t think it works in business,” she said. “If you’re beautiful, let yourself be beautiful. I just feel that you should use whatever you’ve got to your advantage.”

Of course, whether you agree with her theories or not is an entirely different story.

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