Fired for being too hot, woman hires high-profile lawyer

Lorenzana was also at the Sugar Dining Den & Social Club, in Carle Place, LI, on Thursday night, meeting owner Brian Rosenberg to discuss forming Women Against Sexual Harassment. “We want Deb to be a role model for all women who are harassed,” Rosenberg said.

A knockout in New York, Debrahlee Lorenzana, a 33-year-old single mother, filed suit against Citigroup, claiming that she was fired in August from the Citibank branch at the Chrysler Centre for looking too sexy.

“Plaintiff was advised that as a result of the shape of her figure,” her lawsuit reads, “such clothes were purportedly ‘too distracting’ for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear.”

Late-night comedians and tabloids have had a field day. “She Flaunted Her Assets,” punned The New York Daily News. Last week’s Village Voice cover profile of Lorenzana, who grew up in Puerto Rico and moved to New York when she was 21, raved about the bank officer’s charms: “At five-foot-six and 125 pounds, with soft eyes and flawless bronze skin, she is J Lo curves meets Jessica Simpson rack meets Audrey Hepburn elegance.”

TV and tabloids ran pictures, taken by a photographer who works with her lawyer, showing Lorenzana in the pencil skirts, turtlenecks, tailored jackets and stilettos that she says made her bosses at the bank concentrate on the wrong kind of figures.

“She has to manage her wardrobe so these men can manage their libidos?” said her lawyer, Jack Tuckner.

Lorenzana recalled that her supervisors were obsessed over what she was wearing, “saying things are too tight, you cannot wear turtlenecks. Well, guess what? When you say my pants are too tight when they’re not, then you must have been staring at me.

“The reality is, I’m a size 32 DD. I’m very skinny, and then I have curves. So, of course, on my body, the turtleneck is going to make it more noticeable. But I’m not showing cleavage. We wear jackets.”

She said a co-worker who shopped with her and bought the same styles and designer brands never got in trouble.

“I said, ‘You are discriminating to me, because of my body type’,” she said. “This is genetic. What am I supposed to do?”