Monday, August 3, 2009

Pant Wearer

I was reading this article today http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/845226/woman-faces-40-lashes-for-wearing-pants about the Sudanese journalist facing 40 lashes for wearing "indecent" trousers.

What crazy insanity is that law?! I will be watching with interest to see if she wins her fight.

When I received a letter of offer for a job back in the late 90's, there was a line in it that had me in stitches for ages "we prefer our female employees not to wear slacks". Yes, the 90's THIS CENTURY. This was a small suburban accounting firm with "old school" partners who made it very clear that females should be in skirts. At the time I thought it was funny and I didn't care, partly because the job was so close to home and I wanted it and partly because my backside had outgrown all of my "slacks".

Since then I've often thought I should have worn them and not given a toss - what the heck is wrong with a pants suit in an office, yet we could wear a floral dress and that would be fine (yes please cringe). The partners at the time did say that it was due to an employee working there who was rather large and wouldn't have looked any good in pants so rather than telling her what to wear, they told everyone. Nice. Incidently this employee once wore the same outfit for a week - day-in-day-out - and she didn't wash it. We could tell.

When the day came for the chief old partner to retire - the whole office wore "slacks".

Needless to say, I'm so glad I left there.

3 comments:

  1. I wear pants though I tend to wear tights - I find them easier to move in with the children and are cheaper than pants. Especially when im subject to paint; vomit; food; sand; drool; and anything else you want to through in there. Plus im usually in sneakers.

    I could never wear a skirt.

    I always wear black pants when im going to interviews or am on prac for the first day and then view what they wear and go from there.

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  2. I used to love wearing knee or mid-length 40s style skirts when I was at work - Cue did some fantastic assymetrical numbers which were insanely flattering. I have lumpy legs so anything above the knee is all sorts of wrong for me.

    But I prefer pants...they're so much more practical. But any style needs to have some width at the bottom to balance out my very large arse.

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  3. It's so funny, I was told that at my first job too. But it was the owner's mother (!?!!) that didn't want the women to wear 'slacks'.

    This was 1995 - hilarious!

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