I don't know how many of you readers work in an office, and I have had the good fortune to work in place where office attire was a very relaxed set of prescriptions as opposed to a codified law. That being said, there is still a level of conformity required when you are working in an office setting.

I was having this argument the other day with my older brother, Gabe, and he was complaining about how easy women's dress code was to follow. He proposed, even, that women didn't really have to follow the dress code at all.

I get where he's coming from. From all appearances, women's attire is the exception to the workplace outfit. Women can ignore things like 'must wear tie' and 'dress slacks required'. Even prohibitions against flip flops can sometimes be circumvented by a fancy sandal.

BUT.

Whereas men have to follow a strict code that involves dress slacks and a button-down shirt, women, from the outside appear to have more autonomy. Not so. Women have their own laws.

I know this because I stress everyday about what to wear. You can't wear anything too revealing, and you can't wear something that is too eye-catching, unless you want to, and then it better look good on you.

You can't wear sneakers, or other comfortable shoes, but wearing high heels will make walking anywhere tourture.

You should aim to be trendy and fashionable, but if you try for trendy and fashionable and fail, it's incredibly embarrassing.

having worked in offices all over the world, it's always an interesting thing to try to piece together the rules for office attire.

In Korea, someone mentioned in passing that, wow I sure did like to wear bright colors, and hmmm it must be different in America, Korean women don't usually feel comfortable wearing such low cut shirts.
 - as a side note on that, it wasn't that I was wearing low-cut shirts, it's that I wasn't wearing turtlenecks, and anything short of that shows much more of the girls than is necessary. I refuse to wear turtlenecks on principle.

In Saudi, it was all about being the most fashionable, which was hard when you could get written up/ fired for wearing anything too revealing. In Saudi Arabia, 'too revealing' was anything that showed your ankles and above, and anything that showed your elbows and above.

As you can imagine, this seriously cut down our choices, and I was content to go to work in anything that would fit those prescriptions. But I always felt the pressure from my co-workers to dress more fashionable. We even had an award for the best dresser among the teachers.
 - as a side note: we didn't have a 'best teacher' award....

In America, it's a little easier, but not by much. You do have to be fashionable, but most stores for women's clothes I go to either try to sell you something my grandmother would wear, or something I wouldn't even wear to go clubbing in. There are very few shops that sell something in between, and even those have few choices.

Covering the girls is always a problem - like I said, I don't like turtlenecks - and the girls will have their say if I wear anything but. I've come to terms with this, because this is the way I was made, but it doesn't help when I get disparaging looks from women in the metro or cat calls from men walking down the street.

Fashion fluctuates, but it is rare that it favors the lady with a tool set.

This is all to present the question: Who has it worse?

Men have to dress by a strict uniform code and can rarely deviate into something more comfortable or interesting, but they don't have to worry about what they wear.

Women are expected to walk the line between fashionable and professional, and are constantly worrying if what they are wearing is acceptable, but they can flout some of the more strict provisions in the dress code.

What do you think?


As a side anecdote consider this:

One of my male co-workers told me of his experience at my current job, which has a very relaxed dress code. He came in the first day with a tie, and many people joked that he was being so formal.

He considered the joking good-natured and was glad he wasn't expected to wear a tie.

But then.

One day, about three months into working for our company, my friend, let's call him Zack, decided he would spice it up, and wear a tie to work. Within three minutes of him coming into work, several people had strong reactions ranging from making fun to despairing that Zack was making everyone look bad. One of his bosses came in and good-naturedly, but very firmly, told him to take it off.

It kind of went from joking to panicked in zero seconds flat. The reason for this, Zack told me, was because our new CEO wears suits and ties to work everyday, and everyone is worried he's going to up the ante on the dress code for men.

Apparently, no one wants to give him any ideas that they want to start wearing ties.

I'm not big on New Years resolutions, hence why there have been no posts about it. Every year, on my birthday, I decide what I want the next year to look like.

But even I can't resist the allure of the January Season of Optimism - I mean, I started, like, five creative projects in under 30 days, so obviously something is going on here.

I've decided to do a Januray Retrospective - look at where I was last January, and compare it with where I am this January.

Since I have a blog from last January, it's pretty easy to see, actually.

 Let's start with some atmosphere: I was in Riyadh last January, working as a professor at a University whose name will go unmentioned. I remember it being freezing to the point where I bought a special wool coat thing to go over my abaya.

January was filled with rain storms that flooded the city (it doesn't take much, there are zero drainage systems in Riyadh) and snotty fights with my more obnoxious co-workers.

For a written account of the most hilarious of these, see The Cake Incident.

Now, let's talk emotional states. I was in a State last January. I'd decided to go to Riyadh on a flood of optimism that I could handle anything, and was sorely disappointed when it turned out I couldn't.

And to be clear, it wasn't so much the situation I couldn't handle, as much as it was the fact that two of my grandparents passed away while I was away in Riyadh. I honestly couldn't have gotten through those last months without leaning heavily on my friends there, who turned out to be more like sisters in the end. It was the first time in my life that I relied on someone outside my family for support and I was not disappointed.

I also came to the realization that I didn't want to be an ESL teacher for the rest of my life, and I was left wondering: What now?

I love to travel, I really do, but I needed to start thinking about the long term. I'd given up a lot of things to keep moving - I was constantly in and out of the country from the ages of 19 to 25 - and some of those things I really wanted back.

So even though I was leaving a really well-paying job, leaving the chance to travel the world some more, I was determined to make a go of it in America. I was even offered a professorship in China, which I turned down because I wanted to be here.

And it's nice to know, a year on, that I haven't headed for the hills yet. Though times are tough, I am, emotionally if not financially, in a better place.

In Riyadh, I couldn't write a single word because my life was circumscribed within the smallest of circles. I barely ever left my apartment except for work, scheduled group shopping trips, and dance class. My main form of exercise was walking in circles on the roof, trying to get a glimpse of the outside world over the edge of the 8 foot high walls.

Later, I came to realize how I had missed opportunities in Riyadh to get out, how my own emotional state was keeping me prisoner as much as the strict laws and cultural norms. There are definitely ways to have fun in Riyadh, I was just having none of it.

But having struggled with depression before, I wasn't interested in letting it take hold again. I still believe I made the best choice for me at the time, and maybe one day I will go back and try again. Maybe I'll take that professorship in China. Who knows?

The best thing about life is that it's full of possibilities.





For more reasons why I left Riyadh when I did, check out The Reasons Why on my old blog No Cilantro Extra Olives.