Monday, June 22, 2009

Dress code

Today was the first warm day of the year, so, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon, most of us wore skirts or dresses for the first time since last summer. There was a flurry of girl talk as we admired and complimented each other's outfits (many of them bought in the dreariness of March with a longing eye cast towards warmer summer weather), and the conversation soon turned to how each and every one of us, at one time or another, had been prevented by patriarchical or church oppression from enjoying the breezy summer skirt that we'd been longing to wear since March. There were stories of the indignity of being sent home from Catholic school to change, the humiliation of being forbidden by a father to leave the house, the dehumanization of being told you're going to go to hell because you look sexy in that dress, even a now-ex-husband who threw out a beloved sundress because no wife of his was going to wear anything that slutty in public. We were all very glad that we now live such liberated 21st-century lives that we can express ourselves with whatever pretty things we want to wear.

Because my profession is female-dominated and has a disproportionately large number of recovering catholics (Vive la révolution tranquille!), and because my workplace wants to attract the best and brightest of the profession, my employer makes a point of providing a modern, liberated, feminist, secular environment. In this spirit, after hearing our stories, our manager implemented a new policy to ensure that we are never oppressed again: now our dress code stipulates that everyone must wear a skirt that is shorter than fingertip length. No long hemlines, no pants, no stockings, no leggings, none of the tools our patriarchical and religious oppressors used to force us to submit by hiding our bodies.

Of course, everything I've said so far is a complete and total lie. I made up every word of it. We have no dress code (and in fact make a huge point of not having a dress code), we don't have epic girl-talk sessions squeeing over each other's outfits in the office, I don't know of any abusive ex-husbands who threw out their wife's clothes, it's pure fiction. It was hot out today and I did wear a skirt, but everything else is nothing more than a product of my overactive imagination and the glass of wine I had with dinner.

But think about what you were thinking when I said our dress code requires a short skirt. You were probably thinking something like "WTF? That's no fair at all!" You might have been thinking "But what if you don't want to show that much leg?" You might have been thinking "That sounds kind of lecherous and creepy." If you're lecherous and creepy, you might have been thinking "Cool! How can I get a job there!" But I'm certain - I'd bet real money - that you weren't thinking that it's in any way reasonable or helpful or productive or kind or in any other way good policy to forbid us from covering our legs.

By direct extrapolation, it is equally bad policy to ban the burqa in France.

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