fribble
1yr ago
In the past 5+ years, I've never had a conversation about fashion expectations with a woman where she expressed frustration towards modesty standards (either too much or too little).
I may be misunderstanding you; let me know if I am. I don't know a women who isn't frustrated with the clothing available, and it's not all about pockets. I cannot easily find a shirt that isn't too low cut / designed to expose more of my chest than I typically prefer. Tshirts or fairly masculine tailored button downs are pretty much the only shirts I can depend on to meet my preferences. And hemlines are incredibly short. I can either go with long-and-flowy don't show an inch of skin, which tends to be too frilly and feminine for my preferences, or "this is so short it may not be long enough to cover my backside when sitting down" which is ridiculous. Apparently, wanting fabric to extend to my knees or there-abouts is too demanding.
But, I'm not sure I'd talk about these issues in regards to "modesty" because that term isn't really something I talk about much. I'd call it preference, or style. Modesty's part of it, but outside of a religious context I just don't see that term in use.
fribble
1yr ago
In the past cultures have put guidelines on a woman's appearance, without negotiating with women about it. And now the shoe is simply on the other foot: women's visible sexual qualities are a man's problem, and he should simply ignore the bombardment of visual stimulation as women largely fail to realize just how potent the stimuli are because men have been socialized into silence on the matter. There's gotta be something in the middle.
Why do you think women fail to realize that men are visually stimulated? We're told this constantly. We're told that if a man acts out, it's because of what a woman wore, how she looked. Sure, men shouldn't rape, but did you see what she was wearing?
Given different cultural standards in modesty and dress, I don't believe that cleavage, breasts, legs, or any particular piece of a woman's body is just instant "brain off, hormones gone crazy" for men. It's all what we're used to.
fribble
1yr ago
What advice would you give to someone who complained about a coworker who wore well-tailored slacks?
fribble
1yr ago
I can understand. I disagree - I really don't want to go back to the requirements of my youth of wearing hose over any bared leg and having to do my hair in something more presentable than a pony tail. But I understand people who think we're all a too slovenly.
Things have changed pretty quickly. I remember when my mom first wore jeans outside of the house/yard. Now my kid'll wear sweat pants in public. 3 generations - from skirts and hose in public to PJ bottoms.
fribble
1yr ago
Regular, every day, lift and separate bras don't immobilize breasts. They still move. But yes, they visibly move less than braless breasts do.
Do you think it's the movement that draws the eye, or that OP expects women to be wearing a bra, and is drawn to the deviation from his standard? (Or embrace the power of "and.")
fribble
1yr ago
My husband and I are both readers. "Beach reads" drown out a lot of what's available, and are female dominated. My fiction (political thrillers, historical fiction, mysteries) span both male and female, and generally published from major publishing houses. Political thrillers and historical fiction leaning hard into military historical fiction are pretty male. Mysteries and historical fiction leaning into biographical is more female. My husband reads niche horror (e.g. Thomas Ligotti) and well-crafted small press publications (e.g. Centipede Press, Cemetery Dance, Subterranean Press), and he'd say they're pretty male. Maybe find some small presses?
fribble
1yr ago
As a quick note, my comment about girls and boys expressing sexual interest was a response to a claim that women's bodies are more inherently sexual and that even straight women find them so. Which I disagree with and think is an opinion formed from differences in how men and women are taught to express their sexual interest (or not).
I appreciate your more extended comment, but it's a riff in a different direction (I may get back to it - I have to be amused at your perception of me first).
fribble
1yr ago
This is fascinating. As a breast haver and occasional bra wearer, my perspective is that wearing a bra makes my breasts more pronounced. And I am just talking regular bras, not any fancy gravity defying wizard bra. When I am not wearing a bra, you can see my breasts as forms under my shirt, but they don't pop out, they aren't molded into stereotypical half domes thrust out from my chest.
fribble
1yr ago
Covering women's areolas and nipples has been used as a work around for women going topless, leading me to believe those are the areas of primary concern when people talk about bras and modesty. Since typical bras accentuate and highlight breasts, rather than minimize them, and wearing a bra is considered more modest than not wearing a bra (by the OP) that is potentially the case here. It's weird. More clothes is generally considered more modest than fewer clothes, but bras specifically highlight breasts, you would think people who think of bras as for modesty would be arguing for binding, not bras. Bras accentuate the form, they don't conceal it.
So from my perspective if the concern is nipples, bra or not isn't going to change what people see of mine. And braless-me is less breasts-forward than bra-me is.
fribble
1yr ago
I am a straight woman. I might find particular anatomy aesthetically pleasing, and culturally that might be more true of traditionally female anatomy (I don't know that this is true but it doesn't matter), but a man's body is infinitely more sexually appealing to me than a woman's body. I don't think I am an outlier among straight women in this regard. I also think it's true that straight women are unlikely to be as open, perhaps outside of other straight women, as men are about these things. But I think that's cultural - women who indicate sexual interest, desire, or awareness are sluts and sluts are bad. Girls learn to control themselves and comport themselves appropriately. I am convinced boys are also capable of this, even though our society does not require it of them. However I also think it's perfectly good for girls to comfortably express sexual desire and interest, so rather than have boys learn the self control and denial we impose on girls perhaps we loosen up a bit on expressions of female sexual interest and tighten up a bit on expressions of male sexual interest.
fribble
1yr ago
Then we are likely a lost cause and should abandon all hope. More women wear bras than men wear ties and undershirts. If these things need fixing, the work must start at a more basic level.
fribble
1yr ago
It's more than that. The Key bridge was how hazardous loads got around the east side of the city. They can't (legally) go through the tunnels to go through the city. Now, they're either illegally going through the tunnels, or all going around the west side of the city which adds considerable time to trucking loads up/down 95.
The lack of the Key bridge inconveniences those of us who live here, but it's a real problem for road-based freight. I think that's the primary reason the feds want to throw money at getting it fixed.
fribble
1yr ago
If you want a large Jewish community, have you tried moving out towards Pikesville? You'll encounter fewer gunshots and more "I'm the only one out driving on a Saturday morning..." Not that you should stay here if you don't like it. It's a big wide world, find a place where you're comfortable.
fribble
1yr ago
Marylanders for some reason think Ledos pizza is good. They're weird.
We like Scittinos in Catonsville. Even better is Antica Napoli Pizza in Gettysburg. Hit some orchards on your way there, make it a trip.
fribble
1yr ago
Are you sure women's bodies aren't "more sexual" than men's because of ... men? Maybe you're wanting to require us to wear bras because of your issues, not ours?
For what it's worth, typically not wearing a bra doesn't accentuate breasts. If, as a woman, I want to accentuate my breasts, I'm involving a bra. Not wearing a bra is them in their natural state. If I want to accentuate my lips, I'll wear lipstick. Eyes, eyeshadow. If I'm not wearing lipstick or eyeshadow? It's just my face. I'm not accentuating anything. My face is with me everywhere I go. Like my breasts. Can't leave home without them.
fribble
1yr ago
During covid, a lot of people who started working from home started dressing more casually. I am a C or a D cup, depending on brand, and have been since I was 12. If I'm working out, hiking, or doing physical work, I generally prefer to wear a sports bra just to keep my breasts in check. Otherwise, I'm perfectly content not wearing a bra. So during covid, I pretty much stopped wearing a bra. That meant if I needed to run to the grocery store for something, I went without a bra. I'm not my mom. I'm not going to change out of my jeans into something "appropriate" for outsiders, put on some hose, and do my hair and face to go to the store. I wasn't raised in the 50s. I'm comfortable slipping on some sneakers, running a brush through my hair, and going to get some lettuce. How much effort should I expend on this? Are my nipples truly that distracting in the produce aisle? I've given birth and nursed a baby. You can see my nipples. Even when I wear a bra - form-shaping underwire or breast-squooshing sports bra - you can see my nipples.
I'm old, so when I go into the office, or otherwise need to be observed to be professional, I'll throw on a bra. But on my own time? Forget it. In my lifetime we've stopped requiring hose if our ankles might show and (mostly?) stopped requiring shoes that deform and mutilate feet. I'm all for tossing out bras as a required undergarment. FWIW, my understanding is bras at best can contribute to comfort (see my comment about physical activity) and at worst can actually be harmful. From my perspective, they're usually uncomfortable, challenging to size properly, expensive, require special laundering, and I'm not convinced they do anything to promote modesty at least for those of us whose nipples scream "fed babies!" Observing my college-aged daughter's peers, they seem to be treating bras much like I treated hose at their age (old people expect us to use them, so we will when we think we should care about old people, but otherwise hose/bras are dumb and we're not going to bother unless we want to for a particular reason).
Is not wearing a tie lazy? And I think the undershirt is another lost garment. Should we be concerned about male modesty?
fribble
1yr ago
FWIW my marriage is almost 30 and we have had some stages where we were less than loving towards each other. Fortunately they have been short lived and we're mutually committed to making the relationship work. But everyone has bad moments and forgiveness is a gift to be given generously to those we love. Don't judge yourselves too harshly if you ever find yourself in one of those picky-pokey stages.
fribble
1yr ago
It might be worth letting your friend know it doesn't have to be vax or not. I found the early childhood vaccines to be a slam dunk in terms of risk vs illness, but I wasn't thrilled with the schedule. We did one vaccine at a time. It meant more doc visits, but that wasn't a problem for me and the ped. was fine with spacing them out.
fribble
1yr ago
Agreed. In many jobs, to be successful you need to be curious, willing to take risks, able to think things through logically, and problem solve. But for a kid who's never plugged in a phone jack, it shouldn't be surprising if they're also confused when asked about an ethernet cable. This came up because when my kid lived in her first dorm at college, we set her up with a hard wired connection, expecting wireless to be completely overwhelmed. She became the tech support person on her dorm floor because apparently no one else walked their kids through this process. So she'd take her friends to Staples, get them whatever they needed for their particular computer, show them where the jack was in their room (kind of hidden) and get them set up. These kids have not been taught or encouraged to take risks, so the idea of plugging a very expensive computer into some random thing in a way they've never seen or done wasn't something they took to immediately. It all makes sense if you consider the current environment.
This is why I don't want to look for quiz answers or trick questions when interviewing. I want to look for the curious ones, the ones who're willing to try to puzzle through something. I don't care as much about how accurate they are, I care that they're willing to take the risk of admitting they don't know something in front of someone else and try and talk through how they might arrive at an answer.
fribble
1yr ago
For my kid and her peers, their people skills are lightning years above the people skills of the computer people I know (and mine). There seems to be a higher baseline for presentations than there used to be. They have broad computer skills - they may "just" be power users, but they also don't just know excel, they know all the tools. They have better virtual meeting etiquette. I think they have broader skills in general. My kid and her STEM peers have high level accomplishments in athletics, arts, humanities, in a way that I didn't see among my computer peers in the 80s and 90s. Unless you count D&D, quoting Monty Python, and taking the Church of the SubGenius a little too seriously broad high level accomplishments.
I'm not meaning to talk down myself or my peers. But I would like those of us who are shocked at what the kids don't know to consider why they don't know it. If I can't show someone how to plug in an ethernet cable that's on me. It's unreasonable to expect everyone to know everything. I've been employed in tech since 1995, and got "my" (it was a family computer) first computer in 1979 (Atari gang represent!). There are loads of things I don't know. Even things I obviously should know that I just don't.
fribble
1yr ago
I work in tech accidentally. I'm a "little sister." My older brother was very into computers, and I fell into it because working overnights as tech support while I was in law school gave me a lot more time to study than working overnights at a gas station. I knew enough by virtue of being around my brother to be competent (and back then, knowing the difference between SLIP and PPP was enough to get hired). And there was a certain level of trouble shooting and just needing to understand computers that you had to know to use them. So I could swap out cards in my computer as I managed upgrades, I'm not afraid of an IRQ jumper. I've run cables. But I am not a computer person. These are just things I learned by virtue of being around people who lived and breathed this stuff, or because I had to know it in order to use the tools for my specific purposes. And ultimately, because I ended up liking working in tech more than working in law. I'm good at what I do. People who learn I didn't intend to go into tech or that I don't consider myself particularly a computer person are often surprised.
My daughter (college aged) is basically a power user, even growing up with two parents in tech. She hasn't had to do the trouble shooting or the general tech support we had to do, because computers are functional tools now. When something doesn't work, after she turns it off and back on, she's kind of stymied, because things usually "just work" for her. It's the same way a lot of folks are with cars. I grew up with beaters, so there's a level of mechanical trouble shooting I knew that people who grew up with cars that just worked didn't know. Now, because she grew up with parents in tech, she can do basic trouble shooting, she can build simple electronic devices, she knows percussive maintenance can just work. But she has peers (in STEM even) who couldn't figure out how to plug an ethernet cable in (they've never plugged in a phone jack, either...).
I don't think that folks are necessarily less capable, they just don't have the same skill set. It's not required in the way it used to be. In the 80's, if I couldn't build my own PC, I didn't have a PC. Nowadays, building your PC is a niche thing only people who are deeply into (some aspects of) computers do. My daughter and her peers are going to come across as less able, in a lot of ways, than those of us who were in tech in the 90s (or earlier). They aren't. They've just grown up with tools that work. They aren't shadetree mechanics because that hasn't been something in their environment. They know other things. And they obviously have the potential (it's not like we're smarter than them). Nowadays, they have no reason to be able to chant orange white, orange, green white, blue, blue white, green, brown white, brown. So when I'm interviewing (for a junior position), I look for the curiosity, the trouble shooting ability, the engagement. This is particularly challenging because interviewing has become very scripted, at least where I work currently. It's also challenging because there's something about computers that makes a lot of people in it want to be the smartest guy in the room, and they can get really demeaning, really quickly, about someone who doesn't act like they know it all right out of the gate. As if proving themselves superior is more important than finding someone who can do the job. It's not rocket science, even when it is.
I think we often hire the wrong people, both because the candidates show up with less of the knowledge we're looking for, so it's hard to pick out the best ones, and also because the hiring process has become so weird that the ways in which we might have dug for the passion, the enthusiasm, even the basic underlying abilities (do they give up when they don't know something, or do they poke at it again?) aren't allowed. But we focus on, how did this candidate not know the TCP 3 way handshake cold? (Sure, maybe he should have, but it ends up being more important because we aren't allowed to get into how he figured out how to manage pedal feedback, because we'll never learn that he plays guitar in a band for a hobby, and maybe him explaining THAT problem is what demonstrates the trouble shooting and tracing skills that we're looking for, even if he spaced on the 3 way handshake in a moment of stress.)
fribble
2yr ago
My dad told me we make all our big decisions (career, spouse, kids) when we're too young and stupid to know any better. That's no longer as true as it was. We wait (and can choose not) to get married, we wait (and can choose not) to have kids. So we dither about it. It makes everything a whole lot harder. Once you make the commitment, you have to make it work. If the commitment's made before you think about it, you just deal with and move forward. But if you have time to think about the commitment, the magnitude is daunting.
fribble
2yr ago
It sounds like even though the au pair program change has inspired this, you'd be interested in being a SAHM in any case. So considering options (nanny share, retiree needing to earn a bit of extra money...) isn't something you need to waste time on. I will give my standard spiel that women often end up in difficult straits in their later years/retirement because they depend on a single income earner and things happen to make it not work out as expected. When you're in the middle of the stressful childcare years it can be tough to consider the far end of the path, especially if you're confident that divorce isn't in the cards; people don't want to consider early death or disability.
If you can financially swing it and you like being a SAHM, there are certainly ways to keep active and healthy without planning a return to work. My mom is in her 70s and doing very well, and she kept herself busy with church and child-care related activities and jobs her entire life (typical trailing spouse type stuff). She officially retired from paying work in her early 70s, but she's just as busy as ever with church activities and friends. She's sharp as a tack, although I wish she'd stay off the ladder, and I'm thankful she finally agreed to outsource the lawncare.
I didn't want to be a SAHM to a baby (I had a theory that anyone can love a baby, but it takes someone related to love a teenager, so if I was going to have to step out of the work force I figured it would happen during the years my kid was older), so we did the daycare thing. Because we were well enough established in our careers before we had a kid it gave us some flexibility. I worked from home a day or two a week, which meant short daycare days. When my kid was sick, and I needed to leave early or not come in, there wasn't a problem, I had enough sick & vacation time banked. I mention this because sometimes people re-entering the work force are stuck with one or two weeks of sick/vacation, and don't have initial flexibility while they "prove" their worth to their employer. OTOH if your spouse continues working, you can potentially lean on him to be the flexible one if you have a period of less flexibility if you re-enter the work force. On the other, other hand, it can be really hard for a working spouse to go from being all-in on his job because it was critical for his family, to suddenly being the one getting phone calls from the school because Junior's sick or forgot his lunch. I've seen this happen in both directions (and working in a male dominated field, listened to conversations men are having with men about this kind of stuff that I wouldn't ordinarily be privy to). Though you're probably senior enough now that if you do decide to re-enter you could negotiate some flexibility, it's still helpful to consider potentialities.
I wouldn't plan on making enough money with crochet to do more than subsidize your hobby. I crochet and knit, I'm reasonably good and fast, and I give things away to get them out of my house. People like me wreck the potential income. If you want to be a SAHM, and you can afford it, I wouldn't worry about trying to bring in income. For planning a work force re-entry you'd probably be better off finding a part time or volunteer situation in the same general area of your current career. There are any number of volunteer orgs that would love someone with your skills giving them time. Then you're not saying you spent 10 years doing craft fairs or trying to spin an etsy store into an entrepreneurship situation, instead you spent 10 years doing project management work with the local animal shelter, church, or homeless outreach. That is unless you don't want to resume being a PM.
I never did end up opting out of the work force. We lucked into a remarkably easy child and only had the one, and the few times we were in intense-parenting-stages all fit in times when I could auto-pilot work for a bit and focus on the kid. I enjoy working, I like the structure it gives my life, I never wanted to be a SAHM, and during the time when kiddo had a health scare and we though it might be required I really struggling with it. So that gives you some info about my biases.
I hope your kids are doing well, and it sounds like you really will enjoy being able to focus on your kids without other things pulling at your attention.
I think there's a decent argument that while not wearing a tie is declining formality, forgoing an undershirt is forgoing modesty.
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