The Tamesis
“Corporation, but really, men are usually men…that’s it,” she said. That’s it for my Feminist Utopia edit!
As a lawyer, Hay rarely leaves her desk (or BlackBerry), and if she happens to go braless, she always throws on a “forgiving blazer.” The only time she was free from the constraints of her job? The annual La Perla sample sale. It had been a long time since she’d been in the corporate world. So has it changed? She suggested I call her accountant, Zellerita St. Louis, a mother of three who has been in the industry since the 2000s. “I feel like it’s very subjective and comes down to personal taste. I feel like we all know, especially in corporate America, what is respectable and what is not respectable and when. How you dress is going to be different depending on where you’re going or who you’re meeting.”
St. Louis also pointed out that wearing a bra is a cultural thing. “I’m a first-generation American. My mother is from Panama, and I feel like with her, it’s all about appearance. She’s very old-school, so I was raised to wear a bra. It’s something that’s innate to me.” She continued, “I’m an Afro-Latina, and as a black woman, I think it’s more like, ‘I have to be perceived a certain way, a certain way.'” So it was really important for me to fit in as a professional, and that included wearing a bra as society dictated. “
To find another perspective on the situation, I called my ex Fashion Colleague Emily Farra is now an in-house employee of a brand in New York. Farrah has always been the pinnacle of professionalism in my eyes and she definitely wears a bra to work. “Body politics aside, this goes back to double standards in how women are viewed and the pressure to look ‘respectable,'” she said. “In a typical office, if your hair is a little messy, your nails are chipped, and you’re obviously not wearing a bra, that might be noted or judged, even subconsciously. And a man can wear a wrinkled shirt or pants that doesn’t fit, but it doesn’t matter because we’re not used as a species to evaluate their appearance first.”
What a turn off for those who long to go braless in their cubicles! A little cleavage? nipple? What’s the big deal! ! Billionaire Kim Kardashian is an aspiring lawyer herself, and oh my god, last year she launched a bra with standing nipples. However, as Hay points out, “This makes no sense to anyone who actually works in the corporate world.”
