Thank god for loopholes, or

SeaCat

Hey, my Halo is smoking
Joined
Sep 23, 2003
Posts
15,378
This should be amusing.

A local politician here in Florida has proposed following New Orleans and banning the showing of underwear by the people wearing low slung pants. She finds the sight of thongs and boxers offensive. (Having seen her sixty something, 200+ pound body in tight fitting dresses and industrial strength Spandex I wonder at her ideas of obscenity and offensivness.) Thankfully, the law as she has proposed it to the county commisionars does not specificly ban the wearing of low slung pants or skirts. Just the showing of the persons underwear. (I'm not going to point this out to her either.) I can see the swing of the fashion world among the younger ones here. Low slung pants sans underwear. (YeeHaw.)

Cat

P.S. I have already sent her an E-Mail asking her view of obese people wearing bikini's on the beach, Obese people wearing Spandex, and Ugly women working in the Cosmetics Areas of stores. SC
 
Being in the construction industry, I can say that if you banned the showing of underwear, half of my crew would be arrested.

And trust me, my guys aren't showing their Hanes for fashion!

Just another fine example of your tax dollars at work.
 
SeaCat said:
... She finds the sight of thongs and boxers offensive. ...
Dear Mr Cat,

There are people who believe that a person’s unmentionables, like their firearms, should be kept concealed.
 
I think she didn't get to play with Barbies enough as a kid. Everyone always wants to dress you up to suit them.

A lot of employers get into excruciating detail about their employees' clothing. One fire chief had a rule: no one's moustache was to touch the upper lip.

:eek:

I guess they were intended to float above them somehow...

C Crew's assistant chief proposed rules about the color of our t-shirts. We were wearing long-sleeved uniform shirts, so a triangular section of the t-shirt might have been visible at the neck, if that. :rolleyes:

I pointed out he was turning all the lieutenants into underwear checkers! That was effective, and he climbed down off his high horse.

Finding underwear offensive, indeed.

The impulse to control the appearance of the lower orders is essentially undemocratic and insulting. Give the woman some Barbie dolls and tell her to go to the corner and play nice.

cantdog, ranting and grumbling again.
 
LOL

Cant, you remind me of my favorite part of the dress code where I used to work. I wish I could remember the exact wording because it was priceless. Basically, there were 3 caveats: Undergarments must be worn every day, must be clean, and must not be showing.

I always wondered who checked the first 2. :D

- Mindy, commando daily in her button flies ;)
 
clean undies without fail daily

Mindy,

My wife's workplace has a very similar rule, and they have to be white.

They ignore it because no one will enforce it. It's hospital-wide, too. One month, there was a vogue among the phlebotomists to wear the kind of panties with a colorful rainbow just above the crotch, with white scrub pants. When they bent to perform their phlebotomies, their bottoms stretched the pants and, voila! Noah's great rainbow!

cantdog
 
SeaCat said:
This should be amusing.

A local politician here in Florida has proposed following New Orleans and banning the showing of underwear by the people wearing low slung pants. She finds the sight of thongs and boxers offensive. (Having seen her sixty something, 200+ pound body in tight fitting dresses and industrial strength Spandex I wonder at her ideas of obscenity and offensivness.) Thankfully, the law as she has proposed it to the county commisionars does not specificly ban the wearing of low slung pants or skirts. Just the showing of the persons underwear. (I'm not going to point this out to her either.) I can see the swing of the fashion world among the younger ones here. Low slung pants sans underwear. (YeeHaw.)

Cat

P.S. I have already sent her an E-Mail asking her view of obese people wearing bikini's on the beach, Obese people wearing Spandex, and Ugly women working in the Cosmetics Areas of stores. SC

I wonder what she would say about a woman whose slip was showing below her dress or a woman who was showing a tiny triangle of bra above the top button of her blouse. There is absolutely nothing the least bit offensive about either of these things or anything else she wants to ban but I wonder just what would be in the law.
 
minsue said:
LOL

Cant, you remind me of my favorite part of the dress code where I used to work. I wish I could remember the exact wording because it was priceless. Basically, there were 3 caveats: Undergarments must be worn every day, must be clean, and must not be showing.

I always wondered who checked the first 2. :D

- Mindy, commando daily in her button flies ;)
:)

My workplace has a really good foreword to its dress code. "You don't need to be proper. Just apperar that way."

The actual dress guidelines reccomend we stay away from shorts, bare feet and crossdressing.

#L
 
Liar said:
:) The actual dress guidelines reccomend we stay away from shorts, bare feet and crossdressing.

#L

Just as well they're only guidelines and recommendations then. Banning crossdressing is sexist even if applied to both sexes, but I'm guessing that they only mean the guys.

Gauche
 
gauchecritic said:
Just as well they're only guidelines and recommendations then. Banning crossdressing is sexist even if applied to both sexes, but I'm guessing that they only mean the guys.

Gauche
I don't really see why. Almost every dress code out there is different for men than for women. Saying that suit and tie is for men only and skirt and heels is for women only is quite common. Crossdressing is not a sexist issue in this case, but a conservative one. It is banned for the same reason that heavy piercing, latex suits, punk spikes and even hats indoors are banned. For the sake of conservative comformity. Not that I like that either, but hey, I don't rule the world. (Yet.)

Besides, the leg issue aside, with most casual wear, there really is very little difference between men's and women's clothing these days, other than the cuts. I could go into a women's clothing store and come out with an outfit that wouldn't raise an eyebrow, even from the most sexist bloke there is.

#L
 
Banning crossdressing is discriminatory in the least, but I believe sexist too given that one's gender determines it.

One of our nursing school students was a transvestite 24/7. The faculty deliberated only whether his clothes might deter his work at clinical sites. They decided it might even cheer up the patients.

On another note, a dean reprimanded one of her staff for wearing a tee through which her nipples showed. The dean also emphasized that the woman had an ample bosom. She filed a grievance against the dean and won.

Of course this is in San Francisco.

Perdita
 
I've always found dress-codes a little anal, and not in a good way.

I worked in retail management for eons, and one particular place I worked (I won't name it, but everyone would recognize it), had two different dress codes: one for their outlet stores and one for their mall-type stores.

In the mall stores, just about everything goes, it's all about individuality.

In the outlet stores, the dress code was relaxed, but the details were not at all. No tattoos showing (even the very tiny-non-offensive one on my shoulder), there was a length rule for shorts, no midriff showing, etc., etc.

It bothered me that the two types of stores were so different.

Back to the topic of underwear showing. The people trying to legislate that have entirely too much time on their hands. Is there nothing else they can find to work on besides people's personal clothing choices?

One more side note: I went to most of high school in Santa Barbara, CA, and t-shirts with the logo of Mr. Zog's Sex Wax were everywhere (it's a surfboard wax, for those who don't know). When we moved to Tennessee I got sent home from school for wearing it. Go figure.
 
perdita said:
Banning crossdressing is discriminatory in the least, but I believe sexist too given that one's gender determines it.
Is crossdressing different than any other expression of individuality and lifestyle choices?

I'd say that it's no different than banning naturalism, face tattoos or spontaneous yodeling.

I'm not saying that it's ok to ban crossressing. Just that there, in the context of workplace dress codes, doesn't need to be a sexist reason for it. It is simply a way of nullifying people's individuality, which is kind of despicable enough, if you ask me.

Perhaps it is dress codes in general that is discriminatory?

#L
 
Liar, in our societies people have to wear clothes (most places, most of the time), they don't have to have tatoos or yodel, etc. If one needs to cross-dress, which I think is as compelling as needing to look feminine or masculine (despite one's gender), or needing to look Mexican, Chinese or Yorkshire, then it's discriminatory to ban it. To me it would be like banning a nun from wearing a habit, or a Muslim girl from wearing her head scarf.

Perdita
 
So when we talk of religious, sexual or cultural identities, banning their trademarks (for my lack of a better word), is discrimatory. I definitely agree. What about those people who feel the need to wear bullethole jeans, pierce their eyebrows and have punk spike hair? Isn't that a cultural identity, although not a geographical one?

I sure as sunshine don't want to draw those lines. It is all about expessing an identity, showing the world who you are. Everyone should get to do it. I just don't see why one ideintity is more valid than another.

#L

ps. The maori might want to object to that thing about tattoos. :)
 
Liar said:
ps. The maori might want to object to that thing about tattoos. :)
Yes, of course they should. Did you miss my point? Clothing is essential, piercing eyebrows, etc. aren't. My mother pierced my ears when I was an infant, all Mexican baby girls have their ears pierced. When I was a teen in the sixties I and the women in my family were the only females around with pierced ears. My Catholic h.s. did not allow any jewelry but class rings and watches, but even the nuns understood the necessity of my earrings (which were simple, small gold orbs).

Perdita

p.s. you bet I resented it when pierced earrings became the norm, it took away from my exoticness ;) .
 
You still got exotic, baby!

Conformity, yeah. Dressing everyone up for the corporate "image"-- which still to me amounts to "Hey, kids, let's all get together and lie-- or we'll fire your ass", well, maybe there's some justification; even though the arguments for ti all sound like property arguments.

You don't have to work for X Corp., there's the door, they say. But the rest of the sentence goes: "but once you do, you're our property, we own you, you will obey every invasive order or hit the road." That used to be unquestionable. Civil rights came to a dead stop once you took the job.

Head scarves are still explosive in some contexts. Notably in Turkey. And the overtones of ownership by the employer are still there, too. Look at Coors beer! Adolph and the boys searched employee's cars in the company parking lot, searched their lockers while they toiled on the mill floor. They asked a lot of questions on the application for employment and the tests for advancement about your politics and your sexual orientation.

....
 
cloudy said:
... The people trying to legislate that have entirely too much time on their hands...

Agreed!

They should put their excess time and energy into anti-terrorist activities.

That way, we might eventually capture Osama bin Laden.

Or at least his underwear!
 
perdita said:
Yes, of course they should. Did you miss my point? Clothing is essential, piercing eyebrows, etc. aren't. My mother pierced my ears when I was an infant, all Mexican baby girls have their ears pierced. When I was a teen in the sixties I and the women in my family were the only females around with pierced ears. My Catholic h.s. did not allow any jewelry but class rings and watches, but even the nuns understood the necessity of my earrings (which were simple, small gold orbs).

Perdita

p.s. you bet I resented it when pierced earrings became the norm, it took away from my exoticness ;) .

I think maybe you missed Liar's point, 'Dita. Pierced eyebrows are no more necessary than headscarves. Both are part of cultural identity. Some cultures are just more equal than others, no? ;)
 
Min., I think you read me wrong, or I said it wrong, but it hardly matters. P.
 
I'm brassed off!

I work in a Public Library and have done for about six years. For five year it was good. Now we have some corporate bitch in charge who, on the one hand, tells us there's no money to pay us any extra for all the additional jobs we've had to take on board in the last twelve months, such as IT assistance and covering for unfilled vacancies. But on the other hand she now wants us all to wear uniforms, which we've never done and which we're all opposed to doing.

This is going to cost public money.

Can any of you think of things the money might be better spent on. I know myself and my colleages can... and a public hanging is only the start of it! *evil grin*
 
Ah, the good old days.

In the 1960's I was Computer Manager for a company that required its managers to wear morning dress (tail coat and striped trousers) until 6pm and then change into dinner jacket (US=tuxedo) and black tie.

When I pointed out that I rarely came into contact with customers, and could not answer most of their questions anyway, I was told that to make an exception for me was not possible. However, I got round it by wearing a boiler suit and arguing that I worked with non-customer usage electrical equipment and so was logically, but not adminstratively, a part of the building maintencance team!

I admit it was a hotel company.

There was an enormous row when one of my (female) programmers came to work in a trouser suit. It went on until I pointed out that all of the directors wore trousers regularly and nobody complained of that.
 
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