Who wants to work in a “conservative business” anymore? Even Disney World is allowing facial hair and tattoos.
Time to evolve and stop controlling how others look.
In certain professions, even men must conform to a specific look. In the financial arena, for example, a guy can’t wear just any suit if he wants to stand a better chance of getting ahead. People will look askance if it is a cheap suit or not cut right at a certain level of employment. Facial hair and hairstyles are pretty conforming as well. I’m sure the same is true in other professions as well. There is a “uniform”.
There are a lot of jobs where visible tattoos are still verboten, @MotherOfDragons.
But I don’t think workday attire has much to do with the discussion at hand.
@momofthreeboys:
You are confusing inappropriate dress based on business standards and societal norms, and they are not the same thing. First of all, slut shaming has nothing to do with being monogamous, because women are often slut shamed simply because of the way they dress, whether it is hair or makeup or shoes or whatnot and I am talking in public, not in the business place, not in context (for example, a woman who wore a loosely flowing dress working in a machine shop would be a safety hazard, same with hair not done up).
Associating dress that some consider sexy (hey, according to the amish showing your ankles is titilating, same with ultra orthodox Jews) with promiscuity is really bizaree, which is part of slut shaming, someone sees a woman wearing something they consider provocative and they assume she is sleeping around? How the hell do they know? She could be married, there is a woman on my street who loves to dress up in stuff that shows her curves and such, and I know her pretty well and she is a pretty conservative person, so why slut shame someone for the way they dress, assume something about them when they don’t know? And the answer is people who do that don’t know, but they look at the package and their own narrow, judgemental person assumes, and to me it is no different than the racist who looks at a black person and assumes they are a criminal, it is just as biased.
The term also is used against women who are single and are obviously having sex, whether they sleep with one man or many men (or women for that matter), and this is the religious conservative ‘sex is for marriage only’ crowd judging others for their beliefs or the way they live, and calling someone a slut is not a mild sign of disagreement, it is basically saying “you have sex before marriage, you are a slut, have no value, etc” which is pathetic.
This isn’t about being an outlier,this is about a small and judgemental group of people trying to enforce their standards on others. I think that the ultra orthodox Jews with the way they dress or their lifestyles for that matter are absolutely bizarre in many ways, but I also would never say anything to someone who chose to live that way nor would I treat them with anything but respect.
And as so many others have pointed out, what makes it worse is slut shaming is aimed at women, and that is horrible, and you see that with the religious conservative elements as well as broader society, in that what they call women sluts for they either chuckle and say “boys will be boys” or they ignore it, as religious conservatives often do (I hear and read reams of data about ‘irresponsible girls getting pregnant’ and calling them names, but very little about boys who got them pregnant). And it doesn’t take a PHd in religious history to understand why, traditional religion, including all three of the Abrahamic religions, have for most of their history viewed women as tempresses, as ‘daughters of eve’ and so forth, so a woman dressed as they think, provacatively, was therefore out to tempt men (who of course were this innocent lamb tempted by the evil woman’s sexuality). We see this in modern society with orthodox Jewish men refusing to be seated next to a woman or shaking her hand, for fear of ‘being tempted’, we see it in Islamic societies where women have to wear a Burrka so ‘men aren’t tempted’, and we see it in certain Christian circles where they rail about the way women dress or young girls having sex and it is pretty obvious they think that the way a woman dresses ‘tempts’ a man (and it is telling that it is only within the last 40 years or so that society, no thanks to religious types, finally made it illegal for a defense lawyer in a rape case to question the way a woman was dressed and argue “she was asking for it”, something that some religious figures at the time argued should be allowed, to make women ‘think about their actions’).
It boils down to the concept of shame that religion is famous for, using it to control other people, and slut shaming is exactly that. Even if someone is an outlier, what right do others have to judge them simply for being that, when they aren’t harming anyone, including the one judging? Tom Paine had it right, when he said that intolerance and tolerance are the same thing, that in both cases the person thinks they have the right to judge others in the first place for things that hurt no one…or to quote the bible “how can you judge the mote in some else’s eye when you have a log in yours?”.
Lots of people still want to work in conservative businesses. They are conservative bc our customers have to trust us. This is the world we live in. There is nothing wrong with exercising some self discipline. If you want to play the game, you follow its rules. If not, you find another game. You don’t expect the game to change to accommodate your visible tattoos.
Why can’t you try to change the system? If we took your suggestion and applied it to other things, African-Americans would just “play the game” of the segregated system instead of trying to change the system.
It’s funny that people are judged by visible tattoos and piercings considering that there are many much “naughtier” places to exercise body modification. I have a tattoo on my left shoulder that only 1 person at my workplace knows about - and if they were to look at me differently because it was slightly lower on my arm I would say that’s a personal problem for them.
If you base your trust on how somebody looks on the outside, you deserve the results.
There is a big difference. Some changes are required as a basic human rights issue. What you wear is just a frivolous choice usually. If it is religious or the like, even conservative businesses have changed.
We’ve meandered off topic, as these issues apply to women and men equally.
I agree 100% @MotherOfDragons
Literally the hardest working person I have ever met in my life is an ex-con covered with tattoos even on his hands and neck. He was underpaid, overworked, and still appreciative to have been given the opportunity despite his looks and situation. He used to be a jamba juice manager by day AND an extreme pizza manager by night.
I disagree that how you present yourself to the world is ever a frivolous choice.
We are off topic, and frankly, it’s not worth arguing about this. (No one says tattooed people don’t work hard. Of course they do. And they are also smart and kind and creative. That’s not the point. And by frivolous, I mean frivolous when compared to your race, which is not a choice at all.)
I am already 50, so I’ll let the young people change the world.
@HRSMom You are absolutely right (comment 163). As a financial professional myself, one is required to adhere to certain expectations of dress and grooming. If you cannot adhere to these, then please leave (your fired).
@MassDaD68 I think that somebody being told they’re being fired for dressing inappropriately would find it amusing if the phrase used was “your fired” 
I don’t know why we even came to workplace standards, that has nothing to do with slut shaming. For example, sales people working with customers are expected to wear business attire, and businesses have dress codes and the like. To be honest, you go in for a job interview in a silicon valley startup with a crew cut and a business suit (talking a man, a woman dressed like that might fight right in smile), and you might not be hired, but that is not the point of this thread, businesses for better or worse have the right to decide what is appropriate (funny thing in business, though, is that what is appropriate often gets dictated by the employees, a software firm requiring tech employees to wear formal business attire would have a hard time getting top notch talent, cause in tech fields and the like business casual or ‘worse’ reigns. 30 years ago a guy wearing earrings would have a hard time, in tech fields, not that uncommon in some quarters, and so forth.)
But that is away from the religion thread, there is a big difference between the workplace and broader society, and an employee told to wear something less revealing is not slut shaming, slut shaming is degrading someone for what they wear or their lifestyle and is someone assuming they have the right to judge that about another person. That kind of judgement goes on about other things, there are people who see someone with tattoos and or piercings and assumes they must be some drugged out, dregs of society person, but even that is not as bad as slut shaming because that is targeted and drags down someone to the lowest level in the person judging. It tells you how far we still have to go, that sexuality in the 21st century still has this negativity around it, especially when it concerns women, but you don’t get rid of thousands of years of misogyny and stupidity in a fortnight.
No, I never heard of her, nor her situation. Since I was never at that airline, I can’t speak to how prevalent the problem was there. From what I read about her, it sounds like she was harassed on the internet, on an online trip trading bulletin board (not controlled by the company), and disturbed by porn left in the cockpit. I guess she didn’t realize the pictures were of women just illustrating their preference in dress and freedom to be sexual? 
But I’m sure the court case stopped further harassment, sometimes that is what it takes, sadly. I doubt that many men were involved in her harassment, but it doesn’t take too many to make one’s life tough. I never experienced anything too miserable, but starting out in the military makes you tough.
I’m not talking about flirtation.
Here’s an example: some middle schoolers were involved in a notorious party here a number of years ago. The girls–not sure what will pass the censors 
--were convinced to service the boys orally. There was no sexual reciprocation, of any kind.
You can try to convince me that this was girls trying out their sexual power, but I don’t believe it. I think this was girls desperate to be cool and have the boys “like” them.
That’s a far cry from wearing lipstick. As for dressing, I think it is established that women tend to dress for other women, not for men.
@marvin100, yes, I do think that one can tell what is in people’s heart and mind some of the time. And a person who consistently plagiarizes has shown their true colors. A person who consistently rips off the vendors they deal with has shown their true colors. A person who consistently takes advantage of inebriated girls has shown their true colors. Haven’t you ever known a person who is simply untrustworthy, because given the chance they will cheat in one way or another? You really are not going to form an opinion about such a person?
Unless you’re posting from Riyadh or Tehran, you’re arguing against a straw man.
As someone who was in that industry, I can attest to this. I’m a 40 coat with a 30/31 inch waist. Try finding that on the rack. You can have the pants taken in, but if they have to be taken in 2 inches or more, they have to be re-cut and never fit right. Most traditional suits have a 6 inch drop (drop = coat to waist size for those who don’t know) while European/Italian suits have an 8 inch drop, but Italian suits are a little too slick looking in an industry you don’t want to look too slick in, so I was usually stuck ordering custom OR some manufacturers allow you to order the pant and coat in different sizes.
Knowing how to dress appropriately for the industry you are in may not help you get ahead if you don’t have other things going for you, but at least it won’t hold you back. It’s not the people who don’t know the difference or don’t care that you have to worry about, but the ones who do and WILL notice, as superficial as that may be.
I am glad your experience is different @busdriver11, but she only predates you by about 10 years . The things you read about are the indisputable ones, things she had saved to give to her superiors as proof. Pilots tended to be from the ex-military, jut-jawed masculine type, and a female pilot is stuck for hours in a small space where he feels he is master.
She had to endure the typical litany of excuses from both the pilots and the management: just joking, locker-room talk, she is exaggerating, I brushed against her accidentally. Her courage in filing that lawsuit is probably what saved you as much as the way you dress and carry yourself. She now sells grass-fed beef from a small farm north of Seattle.
This article describes the problem that non-obese men often encounter:
http://archive.boston.com/yourlife/fashion/articles/2004/04/10/slim_pickings_in_a_weighty_world/
That may be partly why male college students wearing suits to internship and new graduate job interviews often wear suits that do not fit well. Many are not aware of or cannot afford the more custom or made to measure options.
I do think it has become a little easier to find suits for a slimmer, smaller guy as more places are making slim and athletic cuts these days.
As far as bad fits on college students, many are buying off the rack and not tailoring to fit and/or buying pretty cheap suits. Kind of a right of passage in a way. 