Gender Neutral: Dress codes should be appropriate, consistently applied and gender-neutral; for instance, a woman who is more comfortable in a sport coat and slacks will be considered appropriately dressed as long as she meets one of the dress codes. Industry-appropriate rather than gender-specific guidelines should be articulated.
Make-up: It is inappropriate to require make-up, high heels, or particular hair length or styles of employees who are meeting the feminine dress code; all that is required is industry-appropriate dress and a neat, clean appearance.
This stuff seems to be biased toward Genetic Females that are wearing male clothing!
How perceptive. That's because it
is. This reflects the tail end of women achieving costume parity with men -- nothing more, nothing less. And it's a bit overdue. You see, it's
never been about "equality"; it's about perceptions of power and a desire to emulate those in power. If it
was about equality, rules like this wouldn't need to exist.
When was the last time you saw an "alpha dog" in a company or governmental organisation wear anything other than a "power suit" (and we'll leave J. Edgar Hoover out of this)? It doesn't happen. The net effect is that the "beta dogs" (right on down to the omegas) try to emulate the alphas in order to get a slice of that power -- it's perfectly understandable, if somewhat amusing to the bystander.
Note that
unwritten "codes" still apply; vis Sapphire's attire when she went before that state legislative committee -- and the advice offerred hereon from a collection of fashion-forward, fashion-savvy folks.
It's all rather unfair, isn't it? We, and I refer to all guys who'd like to wear skirts, are now getting a taste of the medicine that was shoved down our female counterparts' throats for so many years. It rather sucks, doesn't it. The only difference is one of scale; women make up roughly 50% of the population: men in skirts, perhaps 0.01%.
What about genetic males that want to wear skirts to work? Why isn't this addressed here? I am very concerned about these recommendations as possibly being incorrectly interpreted by employers as perpetuating the existing double-standard.
The notion of guys wearing anything other than trousers is too new to have been captured by various codifying committees. Too, I suspect that it'll stay that way for a good many more years until seeing guys in skirts in their off-hours isn't rarer than hitting the lottery jackpot. Face it, the notion hasn't achieved "critical mass" yet -- and, it's likely
years away from doing so. It's making progress, and every bloke that "shoves both legs down one pipe" helps to get closer to that critical mass, but it's still so far off in the distance that no company -- even "forward looking" ones -- is going to worry about codifying the notion into the company rules.
Finally, as a parting shot, I'd like to call this little tidbit out for those of you who missed it in the "code" above:
[...] employees who are meeting the feminine dress code[...]
Right there, the arguments about equality and gender-blindness fall on their face as the duality of the two dress codes remains enshrined. What were the folks who drafted this
really thinking about? Were they thinking at all?
