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.

Episode 1 of the new podcast Life: Narrated is available for listening here:

https://soundcloud.com/lifenarrated/life-narrated-1-narrative-in

A Caution Before You Listen: there are spoilers about Braid, Broken Age, Gone Home, Bio Shock, and Spec Ops: the Line. Also, we curse sometimes. There may have been mention of dick pics.

I think it will forever be referred to as the Un-aired Pilot. Because we made some mistakes.

We made some mistakes.

But we learned a lot, too! Like: don't bring a bag of Doritos to a podcast recording. And: Maybe wait to turn the dryer on until after you're done. Also, we should probably have a docket instead of just rambling on...

In this episode we talk about Narrative in Video Games. We touch on topics like ludo-narrative dissonance, unreliable narrators, game mechanics that drive story, historical video game knowledge, and we gush about how awesome Broken Age, Braid, Dwarf Fortress, and Gone Home are.

Towards the end, we get pretty into talking about Broken Age, which is a game that's just been released by Double Fine and which we spent a large part of our Saturday playing together. I apologize that we didn't explain the plot better, but I think we were all trying to avoid spoilers for that one, as the game literally came out last week.

The story with as few spoilers as possible is as follows: it is a game with two stories going simultaneously, one of a girl named Vella, who has been chosen by her town to participate in a creepy lottery/pageant/Hunger games/sacrifice where they dress them all up in cakes and feed them to a monster called Mog Chathra. It's apparently an honor to be chosen and everyone is all about it except Vella and her grandpa. Vella decides to fight the monster instead of letting it eat her, and her adventure goes from there.

The other story is of a boy who is stuck in a spaceship built to keep him safe. It's clear he's been in there since he was a baby because everything from the control room to the 'missions' the computer, Mother, send him on are designed for someone much younger than him.

At some point there appears this wolf who starts asking the boy to go on 'real' rescue missions. But you aren't sure who he is, how he fits into the ecosystem of the ship, and why these missions are so important.

It's a great game, and you should listen to us talk all about it and then buy it and play it for yourself. Though, again: Spoilers!

Whenever I talk about video games to non-gamers, I've heard things like "well, I prefer to spend my time with other people, not computers," or "kids today don't have any patience for a good story" or some similar nonsense.

But on Saturday, instead of going off and doing whatever it was that we had planned, we all sat, together, on a couch and worked through these puzzles for FOUR HOURS. And it was fun.

There are plenty of video games that are like that - that make you think, that tell a story, that can be enjoyed even if you aren't the one holding the controller.

So, if you aren't a video game person, I encourage you to listen to our ramblings and then try out one of the video games we talked about. It will be good for you.

The two microphones I ordered off of Amazon arrived today, because apparently this month is the month I start doing ALL THE THINGS.

I have had an idea for a podcast for a while, and it's slowly taking shape. Studying anthropology makes you appreciate the way we tell a story; the narrative of life. So I thought I'd have a podcast about life's narratives. The stories we tell ourselves.

This won't be actual stories being read aloud, like This American Life, but it will tackle questions like: why are zombie narratives so popular? Why does Game of Thrones have so much sexism when it takes place in a fictional world? Why do Americans throw out food that is perfectly fine everyday? Is representation important in popular media? Is fan fiction a good or a bad thing?

All of these things have to do with how we tell stories to ourselves and each other (yeah, even the one about the food).

Anyway, this is still in infant stages so I'll definitely let everyone know what we start doing it. I'm hoping for it to be a discussion format with me, my brother, and our friend Lauren, because we always have the best discussions.

If you have any topics you'd like to suggest, please do. We need all the help we can get.


In other news, there's a new story up on Internet Troubadours so check it out! This one is called the Secret of Room 404 and it's by Andrea S who has no online presence as she is a technophobe. I feel confident saying this as she WILL NEVER READ IT. I may, however, tell her about it, as I am incapable of keeping a secret. C'est la vie.