Dressed to Repress

Amusing Things

A friend of mine noticed this first, and I'm starting to pick up on it too.

The basic theory is this: whenever a female who normally dresses "engineer style" (t-shirt/blouse and jeans), wears something "unexpected" (anything not t-shirt and jeans), coworkers will not only notice but comment on it. I think it's mostly a "trying to socialize and be nice" kind of thing, but it's really awkward. Sometimes girls just like to dress up!

Maybe it's because the changes aren't really subtle. Patent Red Heels vs. Sketchers sneakers will do that. Wearing hair down vs. up will do that.

Unfortunately I don't think there's a "middle ground" women can dress to, if they want to dress a little better than jeans but don't want to break out the nice suit. I even think most women get "business casual" wrong. I think I commented on this before. It's almost like "business casual" is somewhere between a business suit and party clothes.

It's a bizarre catch-22. She doesn't want to dress schlumpy because she's female, yet if she starts to "dress better" she gets comments she doesn't really want. (OK, to be honest, it's great getting complimented! But it's not why I go to work.) So she either tells everyone to not comment on her appearance (getting her labeled the crazy woman of the office), or goes back to dressing schlumpy (it's the path of least resistance).

Hey, at least dressing schlumpy is a little less painful on the pocketbook. And there are some cool t-shirts out there!

We start because we want to be known for something other than our appearance (and to avoid unwanted male attention). We continue because we can't handle the male attention we get.