Today, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s not a particularly interesting story. It might be a relatable story for some of you, but it certainly won’t be for everyone. There aren’t any life lessons to be learned from it, except, perhaps, things that we already know.
You see, recently I attended a career fair. It wasn’t terribly different from any other career fair I’ve attended during my college career—some of the names were bigger, some were smaller. The dress code was business casual.
If you’re a woman, or appear to be one, you already know that for us, business casual means a little more than shirt, jacket, slacks, and dress shoes. We have a few more options. Blouse and skirt, or a dress. Nothing too form-fitting, but a good pencil skirt should be well-fitted. Of course, skirts can’t be too short. Heels or flats, but heels should ideally be two inches or less. Hair should be neat, and you should wear just enough makeup to look ‘natural’ instead of ‘ill’ or ‘sleep-deprived’. Obviously you don’t need to conform to all these rules, but if you don’t, you may be risking a job, and unemployment doesn’t sound super attractive either.
Anyway, I put on my favorite networking outfit for this fair. A crisp, ironed, collared button-down shirt with short sleeves, a navy skirt that fell to just below my knees, and standard, two inch high, closed-toed black heels. My hair was neat, I wore no jewelry, and I didn’t even go crazy with the makeup—basic nude eyeshadow, a hint of eyeliner and mascara. I looked nice enough, professional. I wasn’t making any statements, but I expected to stand out anyway, and not because of the force of my personality.
And I did.
You see, my shirt was a fairly bright pink, and my skirt was full. In a room full of drab neutral colors, pencil skirts and modest dresses and dark slacks and white tees, I was an anomaly. I was different.
One recruiter told me I was “rather bright”, and another one commented that maybe my “bold outfit” would be better suited to “straight hair”, because straight hair is more professional, you see. I approached a recruiter, in her late 40s perhaps, wearing a cream blouse and black pencil skirt with a gray blazer, and I saw her assess and dismiss me before I’d even opened my mouth, based only on what I was wearing. I left my resume with these people, but I knew that if it were up to them (it was up to some of them, as they were hiring managers), I would never hear back from their companies, regardless of what my resume looked like.
Sounds like a bad choice, right? If I didn’t want that to happen, I should probably have worn a pencil skirt or slacks if I really needed to go with the bright pink shirt, or if I had to wear that full skirt maybe I should have picked a neutral top. Or maybe I should have straightened my hair, never mind that it’s too short to tie back and when straightened it keeps flopping into my face, creating a terrible nuisance and distraction.
Well, as it stands, I’d chosen to do none of those things.
And this is why.
I was walking around in circles looking at my notebook and trying to figure out who I should talk to next and how, when a recruiter called out to me. “I love your skirt,” she said, and that’s the story of how I left my resume with a company I hadn’t even considered before, because they weren’t hiring for my skillset. When I took my leave after she’d told me when they would be hiring for my skillset, she bent over my resume with a pen, and I saw her scribble, “good comm. skills, pink shirt”.
Another time, I approached a company I really wanted to work with, and the first thing the recruiter told me after shaking my hand was, “We’ve been watching you walk around; we were just talking about how much we love your outfit.”
This happened three more times, the compliments not always coming from women, and let me tell you, not only was it an instant icebreaker, but each time I walked away from those recruiters, I knew they would remember me. Even the ones who didn’t like what I was wearing, when I follow up with them there’s a higher chance of them remembering the girl in the pink shirt. In a career fair teeming with job-seeking college students all striving to stand out, I consider that a plus. Now you know why this is my favorite networking outfit.
But here’s the thing: I took a risk. I took a risk because I wore a pink shirt. A pink shirt, in some instances, decided whether or not recruiters would pay attention to me.
Maybe the worst part of this whole experience was that I wore this shirt deliberately, because I knew that.
It’s not a good feeling, to be judged for what you’re wearing. It’s even less nice to be dismissed, simply because of an outfit that was only barely unorthodox. It’s uncool to be told that it would be more professional for you to straighten your naturally curly hair, or that red lipstick is not a good idea if you’re applying for a job at a bank. If you search on google for tips on dressing business casual for women, websites will tell you to the inch the amount of cleavage you’re allowed to bare and the amount of thigh you’re allowed to show. Even toeing the line is considered taking a risk.
A pink shirt is toeing the line. Isn’t that incredible?
Every morning, women wake up and decide. Should they wear makeup, or not? If they do, there may be comments, if they don’t, there may be more. How’s the weather today? Too cold for a dress? Too much snow on the ground for heels? Should they carry the heels in a bag and wear boots to the office and then change? Should they not wear heels at all? Is this color too bright for work? When exactly do you cross from ‘dressed’ to ‘overdressed’ or ‘underdressed’? To conform, to not conform, or to conform just enough? Each decision has its own risks and rewards, and every single decision, these tiny little decisions that we barely think about, affect our daily lives.
Like I said, I’m not here to hand out a life lesson. I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t put your career on the line for the sake of personal expression through clothing. I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t conform to society’s expectations and that you should do whatever you want, and find your fit with a job that allows you to be you. I’m not even going to tell you to judge for yourself if the benefits outweigh the risks and decide for yourself if you want to toe that line or even cross it (except I kinda did, whoops).
What I’m here to do is talk about it. Just that, because we don’t talk about these things and maybe we should. Because being a woman is hard, and some days it really, really sucks.
