Also, that outfit (again with a jacket and dress shoes-now I'm thinking flats would be cuter) would not look amiss on an account executive at a boutique agency like the one where I worked, or on a professional in one of the more creative fields (again, I can only speak for here).

But dress codes also hit larger women, poor women, women who prefer to be more utilitarian than decorative in their attire.

Feh.

If she was booted out of meetings, I'm guessing the outfit in the picture was the least of it.

Am I overreacting, or is this woman kind of a twit? The article has pictures.

She is, but honestly, that look is way closer to the business side than you'd normally see around here.

And I somehow suspect that if she were older, it's possible that no one would have raised a brow or complained, but Seattle business casual might not be anywhere near what it is elsewhere.

Is that even a thing anymore, anywhere?

I think you're not business formal with a skirt and no hose. Oddly here where people do wear T-shirts and jeans is the first place I've worked with a woman who wears suits every day. Not as simple as it is for a guy, but she has managed to get the suits themselves to almost blend into the background man-suit-style.

To be frank, I think bare legs are more casual than hose. I just don't have an urge to work anywhere that cares that much.

At my last job the gender generalisations that the article makes were in full force. Guys in my group got a talking to because they were caught staring at female employees as they walked by.

Not sure why I didn't get talked to, because I sure stared. There was a noticeable contingent of women testing or flouting the dress code in ways that screamed tits or ass.

Honestly, I think anyone who knows (and they knew) they're breaking the dress code rules should follow the rules for a while and see if they're still garnering unwelcome attention. It would have fixed these women's problem.

I still can't believe I've had a meeting here with a woman in shorts (not capris, not gauchos, not pedal pushers, not clamdiggers--SHORTS) and heels. Yikes. No written dress code (it would be impossible here, I think) is confusing.

Only us fatties were asked to never leave our office or open the door without putting on a blazer when wearing a sleeveless shirt.

Oh, nice. I hate people.

It would never occur to me that bermuda shorts would fall in the range of business casual. But I'd also go by what other people in the office were wearing. At my new job, I'm going to have to wear business casual clothes for the first time ever, and I'd rather err on the side of "too formal" than "shorts, woohoo!"

The twit was in marketing, which in my experience is very businessy-dressy, as professions go.

Also, I don't see any shorts, even formal bermuda shorts, as work-appropriate in a business-casual environment. I don't even like to wear capris, though I've been wearing them to move books the past couple of weeks. The library director wears capris a lot, and I think to myself, I know we are in academia, but you should not look like you are at the beach!

Capris always look comfortable to me, but I don't look good in them. Which has made pants shopping difficult for a couple of years.

If you show up in a suit, folks think you must have a client interview.

Yeah, I'm probably over dressed here. I usually wear a nice skirt, button down top and heels. Though some of my newer coworkers and my boss sometimes dress like that too. Lately, I've taken to wearing jeans with the tops to dress it down a bit.

Today it's white short sleeve buttondown with a kelly green sweater vest (normally worn with white linen circle skirt trimmed in battenburg lace) dark jeans and green 2 tone heels.

Capris are almost muffaletta, aren't they?

A lot of those cropped pants cut the calf in such a way as to make the wearer look stumpy and short and long-waisted. I'm not sure why anyone would sign up for that, but plenty of women do.

The more narrow-legged cropped pants, or ones that end at or just above the knee--as in, anything that says "leg midpoint right here!!!1!!" doesn't do that so much, and those look fine to me.

I only hate dress codes when they are unstated, or badly stated. If you tell me "dress professionally" or "just look at what everyone else is wearing, you'll figure it out", well, no, I won't. I would rather be told explicitly that skirts must be at least below the knee, pants down to the ankle and necklines above the collarbone than try to guess what's okay and what isn't.