Dress Code - Bare Legs OK or Not?

[tctrek]

As part of the over 50 crowd there was a time when I would have been absolutely mortified to go to the office without hose on! Even showing bare ankles when wearing pants was tabu. But I think the times are changing and if the skirt is a proper fit, ie: not a mini skirt showing your behind, that it's ok. This week, for the first time in my professional life, I wore a skirt without hose to work. A cute pencil skirt that comes to my knee. It freaked me out a little, but I survived the day and was a lot cooler. My company has our A/C set at 79 degrees to save money/energy. I am roasting away in my menopausal misery, so the skirt gave me some relief.

I also think you have to be careful not to go too far at the office -- no flip flops , see-through fabrics, belly tops, etc.

I agree totally that an interview is different. You need every advantage you can get and professional dress is a big one.

[ilima]

I've also been asked during the last year in job interviews: 1) whether I have children; 2) whether I want children; and 3) whether my husband would quit his job to take care of kids if we had them.

CA

These are lawyers or people that work for law firms asking these questions?

Baffling.

[Tuckervill]

I once worked at an office that didn't allow open-toed shoes, AND required hose.

I think it's interesting that a person from Canada thinks it's no big deal to wear hose when it is hot outside. A superior from Minnesota once told a group of us that we should always wear a suit jacket, no matter what the weather. Yeah. right. Try that with Arkansas humidity or Florida temperatures!

Karen

[ZenSojourner]

You won't catch me dead wearing a suit. I wore them for the first 2 or 3 year in the work force and grew to hate them. Then I gave them all away to a coworker, who couldn't believe what I was doing. That was in the mid-80's. I've never regretted it.

No more runs, no more sagging hose, no more uncomfortable clothes. No more skirts or dresses. In my job as a software engineer I was occasionally required to crawl under tables following cables, rerouting computer connections, what have you. I made the mistake of attending a "professional development" seminar for women - I have no idea why I did this, it turned out to be a VERY bad idea - and got held up to the rest of the women as a bad example (I showed up wearing silk trousers, a silk blouse, and a heavy sweater because I'm cold all the time, they were NICE clothes but not a suit). When I pointed out to her the practical problems with wearing skirts and dresses and then having to crawl around under tables, up ladders, and poke my head up into ceiling cavities checking connections and what not, she primly informed me I should wear CULOTTES.

I burst out laughing right in her face (which also pissed her off, but I was PAYING for this crap, LOL!)

I cannot imagine the looks if I had shown up to work in CULOTTES. Actually I can. Pants raised no hackles, bothered no one, but CULOTTES? Culottes are for gym class, LOL!

BTW, I have no idea how you could tell the difference between ski socks and any other knee sock, but if I sit down and someone peering under the table at my ankles can somehow tell they're ski socks (as opposed to "plain ol' kneesocks", whatever that means), tough. Who pays that much attention to someone else's ankles anyway? I get COLD and I will do whatever it takes to counteract that. My physical comfort trumps everybody else's sense of propriety, especially when it's over something as unobtrusive as socks under nice trousers.

[Blueberry]

These are lawyers or people that work for law firms asking these questions?

Baffling.

These were lawyers. Who represent plaintiffs in employment law matters.

For some odd reason, lawyers seem to think that the law does not apply to them.

CA

[OakLeaf]

These were lawyers. Who represent plaintiffs in employment law matters.

For some odd reason, lawyers seem to think that the law does not apply to them.

CA

I had a job interview with a federal judge once, in which he repeatedly asked me whether it was "Miss or Mrs." After about three rounds of "Ms." I finally answered his question. (I was young.) As soon as the interview as over I mentally kicked myself. I still wonder whether my willingness to stand up to him for what I knew was right, was part of the interview. (For that reason or whatever, he didn't offer me a job.)


But to the OP: I think it depends on your clientele. There are definitely people who think bare legs are "gross" in a professional setting. Even if you disagree with that, you don't want to alienate your patients. In an office where there was less contact with the public, if I were the boss, I wouldn't make pantyhose part of the dress code (even though I personally wouldn't dream of dressing "nicely" without hose). In a medical office, I might. Honestly, what would you think of men's bare legs in your office?


Aside to Tuckerville: Minnesota in the summertime is hotter than most of Florida (regularly in the high 90s to low 100s) and at least as humid as Ohio. I believe the same is true of much of south central Canada. Just because it's cold in the winter doesn't mean they don't know what summer is like.

[pinkbikes]

Luckily, I'm now an engineer and having any 'style' at all is clearly optional for my profession so I never have to worry about it again.

Bahahahahah! As a fellow engineer that tickled my fancy bigtime!

I know just what you mean. Sometimes I think that a plastic pocket protector is the highest fashion item they own!

Mind you - when I started out as an engineer I was the only female there, so I pretty much got to set the dress code since nobody knew what a female engineer should wear. I upset my boss on the first day by listening to my mother (thanks Mum) and wearing a skirt (no hose by the way) because she insisted that no woman should ever start a new job in pants! He was apalled!

Since then the crimes against fashion that I have perpetrated are truly worthy of my profession. The denim shorts were probably the worst - patched them until all the patches damned near joined together! Sometimes I wish there was a giant trapdoor that could swallow the stupid moments of the past!

[OakLeaf]

It's not like being asked to wear a head covering in an fundamentalist Islamic country.

Ahem. Is it like a French woman being asked to wear something above the waist when she sunbathes on American beaches?

Okay, discussions about hijab are pretty far beyond this thread... but it raises my hackles when people suggest that OUR standards of modesty are reasonable and properly enforceable by law, and OTHER cultures' standards of modesty are not reasonable and should not be enforced by law.

[Crankin]

I do not "look under the table" and peek at people's socks. What I described is just available to view, when people sit down.
I *do* care how I look. I love living in my athletic type clothes when not in a professional situation and I like being outdoors and getting dirty. But, when I am at work, I like looking a certain way. For 30 years I worked in a profession where the range of acceptable dress was wide. When I was young, I looked really young. In my second job, the lunch lady tried to stop me from going behind the counter to buy the teacher's salad. This was in a school that only went up to sixth grade! So, I wore suits, dresses, or dressy skirts. And hose. I found both students and parents reacted in a different way, as opposed to when I was dressed down.
In the last 15 years I changed my style to more business casual. But, I rarely wore jeans to school. I like buying clothes, so be it. But now, I spend more on my cycling and running stuff...
Now that I am in grad school full time, I have observed that the younger students actually dress better than most of the ones closer to my age. I was surprised to see that many of them wear skirts. I am not talking about prim, dressed up clothes, but stylish skirts and pants that look quite fashionable.
Wow, this thread has morphed a bit. To me, it's like the make up discussion that comes up every so often. Yeah, I wear make up, get my hair highlighted, wear nail polish. And I like to dress up. I guess I don't get why people think this is so horrible. I am not really a girly-girl, but even if I was, so what?
Those lawyers asking those questions !

[Grog]

These were lawyers. Who represent plaintiffs in employment law matters.

For some odd reason, lawyers seem to think that the law does not apply to them.

Is it perhaps because it in fact is not applied to them, i.e. there are not sufficient complaints filed against them and cases that end up in courts to cause them to bother? What if every female candidate sued their @$$ off for asking such questions?

[ZenSojourner]

Crankin, caring about how you look is fine. But extending the same standards to other people - not so much. Again, I wonder how you can tell the difference between "ski socks" and any other socks. But then maybe it's socks altogether you find objectionable? I'm really not sure, maybe you were only speaking for yourself after all, it just seemed you were setting a standard for everybody. I actually did not remember who said that, so it was a response to content and not person, and may very well have been taken out of context.

Anyway. One time in my life I have run up against someone I considered hypersensitive on the issue of modes of dress, and she justified it for similar reasons that you give - being short, female, and very young looking, she became overly concerned with appearing "professional" at all times, which for herself might have been fully warranted, but as a university professor, she turned around and tried to apply these same standards to her students. Some of whom (me for example) were significantly older than her.

Now keep in mind that she was not an employer, she was a university level professor at a small regional public college, and we are not talking about comportment and dress at work, but in class settings, not by employees, but grad students. She actually made whether or not she approved of your dress part of your grade.

The fact is that in a therapy setting, dress is appropriate or inappropriate IN CONTEXT. There are settings where you'd better dress to the nines if you want your client's trust and respect, and there are settings where you'd better NOT show up dressed to the nines if you want your client's trust and respect. You need to use a little common sense.

This woman believed and tried to enforce the idea that her standards of dress were ALWAYS appropriate in all situations, and took it a step further in my case to the point where she was downgrading me in class for wearing sandals (not flipflops but sandals) OUTSIDE of class. Then she gave me a C (the graduate level equivalent of a flunking grade) because, she told me, "the profession needs to be protected from you".

Guess who didn't teach that class anymore by the time I was done with her?

Harkening back to another thread, if my only choice in job hunting was a job that required a standard of dress I didn't like, I'd take the job, I'd conform, and I'd keep looking for something better. It's all arbitrary anyway.

But doing so (or not) doesn't change my personal standards. Pantyhose? Haven't worn them in almost 25 years, won't ever wear them again. When I first left home I was so self-conscious of my bare legs I wouldn't wear SHORTS without pantyhose. I got over it, and so has most of society, as time has passed.

I don't wear makeup, and I never will. If I came upon an employer who tried to require me to wear makeup you'd see a lawsuit shortly. IN CONTEXT; there is no job I'm going to be applying for that would have any excuse for making such a requirement.

As far as the hijab and purdah being compared to full frontal nudity, we don't stone women for going topless on the beach. Women in certain areas of the world where Islamic law is trumping secular law are beaten, raped, and killed for so much as showing a strand of hair. It's not even mandated by the Qu'ran. It's something that's barely mentioned in the Hadith, based on varying translations of 3 different sentences.

That's hardly the same thing as going topless and getting fined and maybe arrested.

[OakLeaf]

we don't stone women for going topless on the beach.

First of all, the comment I was responding to was one about women being "asked to" cover their hair. In the context of a discussion about what women are "asked to" wear on the job. Not what we're being stoned for doing.

Second, although it's certainly true that some of the behavior you mention is sanctioned by law in some countries, most of it is extrajudicial. A woman in the United States who was raped after walking topless down the street would get very little sympathy from most quarters, either, I'm sorry to say.


And I still think there's a strong chance that asking those questions in a job interview is a test, not a real search for the answers.

[Jolt]

Wow, this thread has morphed a bit. To me, it's like the make up discussion that comes up every so often. Yeah, I wear make up, get my hair highlighted, wear nail polish. And I like to dress up. I guess I don't get why people think this is so horrible. I am not really a girly-girl, but even if I was, so what?

It's perfectly fine if someone *chooses* to do those things because they like it. The issue is with making it a requirement or an expectation and "forcing" people to do it in order to be acceptable. Especially for impractical, uncomfortable and potentially unhealthy things like hose and heels (and neckties for guys--especially in a clinical setting where they have been SHOWN to be an infection control problem). As for people thinking bare legs (in good condition and under a skirt of a decent length) are "gross", I still don't get it.

[ZenSojourner]

Ahem. Is it like a French woman being asked to wear something above the waist when she sunbathes on American beaches?

Okay, discussions about hijab are pretty far beyond this thread... but it raises my hackles when people suggest that OUR standards of modesty are reasonable and properly enforceable by law, and OTHER cultures' standards of modesty are not reasonable and should not be enforced by law.

I was responding to what is enforced by law, not what is "asked".

[Tuckervill]

Is it perhaps because it in fact is not applied to them, i.e. there are not sufficient complaints filed against them and cases that end up in courts to cause them to bother? What if every female candidate sued their @$$ off for asking such questions?

Maybe they'd stop asking the questions and using the answers in their hiring decisions! Imagine that!

Karen