Re: "Dress Code Politics"

I'm intrigued by the last post about clothing regulation in the work place. I agree with your conclusion that women should feel free to wear whatever they want -- but I arrive at it through different reasoning.

People criticize the temerity of women's work clothing as a way to criticize the women themselves for their boldness, fearlessness, and confidence. Women are unfairly demonized for demonstrating the very things that employers look for -- self-confidence, courage, and creativity. Employers and those they employ need to accept that confidence, courage, and creativity have always been and are becoming more genderized. See the following article in Newsweek Magazine (http://www.newsweek.com/id/140457) about Nerd Girls ..."they're smart, they're techie and they're hot" reads the tag line. These young women are engineers, good at what they do, driven, and creative. They've manufactured themselves using more of the tools at their disposal than their predecessors. No longer are nebbish she-nerds the prototypical and peripheral players on the science scene.

In short, women are powerful because of their brains and their bodies, as are men.