Historical female business attire really is the stuff of nightmares.
And the worst thing is, it really wasn’t that many years ago when acceptable women’s business attire was this scary.
Below are five examples of such attire that I praise the Lord I don’t have to wear anymore:
Pencil Skirts
Personally, I’m not a skirt fan.
I’m a trousers and jeans woman, and I love not having to worry about giving some innocent stranger an eyeful of my underwear and nether regions if it’s a windy day.
But in terms of skirts, I think one of the worst kinds ever invented was the pencil skirt.
If I have to wear a skirt I prefer the full puffy variety which better accommodates my full puffy female thighs. Because there is literally nothing pencil-ish about me.
But pencil skirts are also uncomfortable and awful to wear.
As they’re made to be slim fitting, they force you into taking short constrained whippet-like little strides. Which gets really tiresome after an hour or so.
And I don’t know about you, but having to minimise my stride to accommodate an item of clothing doesn’t suit me at all.
I’m from the bush, and I don’t tolerate my powerful stride being constrained by anything or anyone.
Shoulder Pads
Shoulder pads are completely unnecessary.
They were of course introduced as part of power dressing because they supposedly accentuated your shoulders, armoured you up and made you feel more important.
But inserting unnecessary pads in a shirt or jacket to enhance the size of one’s shoulders really is just down right weird.
You also have to watch the annoying little buggers to make sure that they’re in place, as they have a tendency to move or fold over onto one side rather than to sit open on both sides of your shoulders when you put the shirt or jacket on.
I don’t know about you, but my shoulders are actually solid and broad enough already.
I don’t need shoulder pads to make me into some kind of grid iron player or an Aphrodite goddess going into battle. And I don’t know why any of us should attempt to emulate the ridiculous superman “wedge” physique, because this is a ridiculous fantasy for all of us, whether we’re male or female.
High Heels
I seriously love being taller than other people and being able to look down on them. Don’t we all.
But I don’t love putting up with excruciating pain all day.
So I don’t bother with high heels at all, and I feel for women who endured them all day at work in the past.
In my view, the only possible benefit of high heels is that they can be taken off and used as a weapon to gouge an attacker’s eyeballs out, if this ever became necessary.
Thankfully, the fitted business suit and matching glossy high heels is no longer expected of any woman in any business context.
As a result our feet are so much happier, we are so much happier and the world is a better place.
And we can just wear high heels if and when doing so suits us.
Hair Spray
Hair spray smells *ucking awful.
They always add perfumes to it, but the ingredient that actually fixes the hair in place has never been masked successfully by whatever else is in the spray.
Not only does it stink when you apply it, the fixative chemicals in it choke your airways out completely.
And then you have to put up with the revolting smell of hair spray all day as you walk around with your sticky toffee apple head.
As well as that, you have to remember not to touch your hair at all during the day as you normally would.
Because if you make the mistake of doing this your hand can get stuck in your sticky toffee apple.
And you can easily dismantle the entire the delicate construction, which is then difficult to re-build.
I’m so glad hair spray is used on a more limited basis these days.
Trowelled on Make-Up
Back in the day, make up was a serious and colourful affair.
It was also more crude and trowelled on than it is now.
It was applied a bit more like it currently is for special occasions, like weddings.
You know the feeling. You sit there on the morning of your friend’s wedding like an innocent lamb to the slaughter, enjoying the relaxing sensation of someone pampering you and softly tending to your face. You imagine how amazing you’re going to look as a bridesmaid at the end of it all, because they’ve certainly worked on you for ages.
Until they finally pronounce you finished and show you the mirror.
At this point you realise with horror that they’ve made you look like a prostitute that’s wandered out of a dark 1980’s back alley somewhere.
Apparently this is because you’ll be at the event for several hours and the make-up has to last over this period of time.
But instead all it really means is that you’ll scare everyone during most of the event because you look like an 80’s prostitute.
And you’ll have no chance whatsoever of scoring when your make up has supposedly softened later on anyway.
If you didn’t already have enough to contend with, while the make-up artist worked on your face the hairdresser also put your hair in an up-do and fixed it in place with a whole can of hair spray.
The up-do subdues and restrains your hair that much that you now look like a librarian.
This is super disconcerting in combination with the prostitute make-up.
And to top it all off, you’re now wearing a revolting lilac frock with unnecessary flouncy bits hanging off it. And you’ve got to wear this for the whole event.
No wonder bridesmaids drink a fair bit at weddings.
© Annemaree Jensen