On Thursday night, as she prepared to appear on the Monday morning shows, Lorenzana recalled that her supervisors 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.

Image Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

“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, and neither did some tellers who wore low-cut tops, snug pants and hot boots.

“I said, ‘You are discriminating to me, because of my body type,’ “ she said with a slight accent and a breathy voice. “This is genetic. What am I supposed to do?”

Citigroup didn’t return calls for comment on Friday. Lorenzana’s lawsuit says that her bosses told her that her female colleagues could wear what they liked because their “general unattractiveness rendered moot their sartorial choices.” Her well-tailored clothes, on the other hand, emphasized what her lawyer calls her “hourglass figure.”

This case has caused such fascination because usually it’s the other way around.

Attractive professors get better evaluations from their students, according to one study.

A 2005 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis confirmed what seems apparent, from presidential races to executive boardrooms: Good-looking people and tall people get a “beauty premium” — an extra 5 percent an hour — while there is a “plainness penalty” of 9 percent in wages.