We Mean Business
Image Courtesy: Instagram
Business attire. From a casual blazer look to pin striped suits, if you want a job in an office setting, it’s likely you will need to acquire some form of business wear. For men, that includes various forms of slacks and collar shirts and possibly a tie, but for women, the act of both buying and wearing business attire presents a multitude of quandaries. Business attire for women is not only expensive and ill-fitting, but also enforce long standing societal constructs that give way to unfair restrictions on how women dress in the workplace.
It is easy to be critical of the simple functionality and design of women’s business attire. The lack of pockets and incorrect tailoring is infuriating. Not only can’t you put your phone in any of the pockets, but the clothing, especially the suits, don’t always fit correctly right off the rack and often need tailoring, which is an additional cost to what is already expensive formal attire. Likewise, when I think of business clothes, fashionable power suits by Chanel are not the business attire that comes to mind. Rather we’ve normalized boxy, oversized, mundane outfits, which are not necessarily something exciting to wear everyday. I’ve never been the biggest fan of business attire myself; it often feels like I am wearing a school uniform. However, the most frustrating and puzzling aspect of women’s business attire is in the workplace itself and a certain duality that surrounds women’s workwear. A heightened and somewhat unrealistic expectation is put on women to look put together even more so than men in the sense that women are required to both dress conservatively and also embody a sense of conventional and possibly unattainable beauty, and they must do this all while trying to establish their own place in a work environment. In comparison to men, this makes selecting business attire for women significantly more difficult.
Image Courtesy: Instagram
Women have to consider more factors than men in terms of what is deemed appropriate for the workplace. “Is this too revealing? Is the length of this skirt appropriate? Shoulders covered? Makeup? Heals? And how high?” The list is endless, and exhaustingly so. It’s sexist, and it is so because these written or unwritten rules defining women’s workwear are attempts to have women “cover-up,” while also dousing any sense of individuality or femininity in the workplace. Not only do women have to work twice as hard to show that they belong, but these implicit dress codes are indicative that women are still not fully accepted in the workplace.
For decades, women have been trying to establish their place in the business world, and these strict dress codes both enforce gender stereotypes and also set women apart from their male counterparts in a negative way. What a woman wears in the workplace is not definitive of her work ethic, and while I do understand that there is a level of professionalism to be had in the workplace, the workplace dress codes are too restrictive on women. This further emphasizes the need for more women in the workplace and more so in positions of authority.
In this 21st century, not only are we seeing a new generation of workers begin to get rid of these restrictive dress codes for women’s business wear, but we can begin to see a trend towards more casual clothing in the workplace. This then removes barriers to the business world, making it more accessible and inclusive for all. It’s time to bring fashion, individuality, and equality back into the workplace, because at the end of the day, regardless of the clothes, women mean business.
Strike Out,
Writer: Isabelle Grassel
Editors: Trinity Reilly & Theresa Tulsiak
Notre Dame
