Dressing for Failure

PR Differently has a good post up on corporate attire. Now, I'm kind of an odd one to be agreeing with him - I spent much of my career raging against "proper" attire. There comes a point where you have to decide something simple though:

Do you want to tilt at windmills, or do you want to be taken seriously?

I figured that being taken seriously made a lot more sense. It seems that this is a lesson that many people have to learn for themselves, though. From USA Today, a woman who was yanked from a meeting for dressing too casually said:

"Each generation seems to have a different idea of what is acceptable in the workplace, and in this situation I was highly offended," says Cohen, who works at a marketing firm in Philadelphia. "I was actually not allowed to attend a meeting because my attire was deemed 'inappropriate.' People my age are taught to express themselves, and saying something negative about someone's fashion is saying something negative about them."

Well, yes - it is a negative comment on you, just like it was a negative comment on me when I dressed down for meetings. You can imagine that it's a "rugged demonstration of individuality" all you want, but everyone else in the meeting is thinking "what a moron". It took me way too long to figure that out.

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