Dress Code - Bare Legs OK or Not?

[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.