This is kind of a rehash of the harrumphing in Thread731-110284 (which I happened to surf to recently), but I just gotta.
I was just at a conference. There were a number of college students in attendance.
The boys all wore what I'd expect a student to wear to a conference--variations on the theme of polo or oxford shirt, and khakis. More formal than they'd wear just hanging out or going to a party.
The girls, on the other hand...
Okay, it's not like they were wearing lowriser jeans with their thongs sticking out. But they wore outfits that, although fairly nice, looked a lot more like they were going to parties than to a meeting. And they wore that "I'm finally too old for Daddy to tell me not to do this" quantity of mascara that has been popular with girls and that adult women have always grown out of since about 1968.
And they wore flip-flops. Sure, new fancy flip-flops with little gold spangles, but flip-flops dammit.
And yes, I know, the face of engineering is changing and new demographics will bring in new looks, but this didn't strike me so much as cutting-edge as simply juvenile and clueless.
There were also girls there who knew how to dress--they looked plenty feminine, plenty modern, but professional. So it's not simply that Times Have Changed. (And besides, cutting-edge in engineering just means wearing what was cutting-edge a few years ago in less conservative fields but is now pretty standard. Flip-flops are NOT "the new flats", and a quick googling backs me up on this.)
There were no boys who wore nice yet inappropriate clothes (like, Idunno, silk knit T-shirt with more jewelry than one ought to wear to the office).
I don't really think it's just a matter of What Young People Are Wearing These Days. I recently attended a presentation given by a bunch of business school freshmen (age 19, mostly girls), and they were all VERY professional-looking. I guess they teach them that in B-school.
So why should it be the girls who didn't bother figuring out what they should wear to this conference? Is it lack of role models hanging around their civil engineering departments? Or is it the greater variability in women's wear that leads to more likelihood of picking the wrong thing?
Or is it just my deep-seated prejudice against anyone who reminds me of high school?
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376
I was just at a conference. There were a number of college students in attendance.
The boys all wore what I'd expect a student to wear to a conference--variations on the theme of polo or oxford shirt, and khakis. More formal than they'd wear just hanging out or going to a party.
The girls, on the other hand...
Okay, it's not like they were wearing lowriser jeans with their thongs sticking out. But they wore outfits that, although fairly nice, looked a lot more like they were going to parties than to a meeting. And they wore that "I'm finally too old for Daddy to tell me not to do this" quantity of mascara that has been popular with girls and that adult women have always grown out of since about 1968.
And they wore flip-flops. Sure, new fancy flip-flops with little gold spangles, but flip-flops dammit.
And yes, I know, the face of engineering is changing and new demographics will bring in new looks, but this didn't strike me so much as cutting-edge as simply juvenile and clueless.
There were also girls there who knew how to dress--they looked plenty feminine, plenty modern, but professional. So it's not simply that Times Have Changed. (And besides, cutting-edge in engineering just means wearing what was cutting-edge a few years ago in less conservative fields but is now pretty standard. Flip-flops are NOT "the new flats", and a quick googling backs me up on this.)
There were no boys who wore nice yet inappropriate clothes (like, Idunno, silk knit T-shirt with more jewelry than one ought to wear to the office).
I don't really think it's just a matter of What Young People Are Wearing These Days. I recently attended a presentation given by a bunch of business school freshmen (age 19, mostly girls), and they were all VERY professional-looking. I guess they teach them that in B-school.
So why should it be the girls who didn't bother figuring out what they should wear to this conference? Is it lack of role models hanging around their civil engineering departments? Or is it the greater variability in women's wear that leads to more likelihood of picking the wrong thing?
Or is it just my deep-seated prejudice against anyone who reminds me of high school?
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376
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