And before you say it, this is NOT equivalent to wearing a suit and tie.  A dress code is one thing, but this is something else.

double-standard alert!

how do you know what it feels like to be bound by such ludicrous mores as the suit and tie thing? i accept that the pressure is much worse on women, no argument there, but i agree with mig that women do a lot of this to themselves, as we men too do with the inane rules on neck-throttlers at work, or penguin outfits for 'evening' wear.

the whole thing is a preposterous farce, boosted to pimp $ into the fashion industry which knows no gender confinement when it come to iconising the absurd for profit.

men will never know the pains of menstruation or childbirth, and women will never know the pleasure of growing a beard, or the equal pleasure of shaving it off. (or the pain of being kicked in the nuts).

there may be similarities between us, indigestion etc, but largely women are designed entirely differently than us, for some ancient repro reason, (shortly to become totally irrelevant, as science has its merry way with us...)

i find it makes life infinitely interesting, after all our interdependence is as close to absolute as could be.

great rant izzy, whatever it takes to get you sharing your inimitable take on things, works!

the health care diary was as good as anything ever diaried here, imo.

and last but not least, my sympathies for the difficult aspects of being a woman of your intelligence and sensibility in a world being run into total insanity, 90% through male pathology.

the fact that this distortion field reaches as far as your underwear is depressingly unsurprising, i too would feel rage at the madonna-slut dichotomy being laid on/pandered to me, although i'd never be able to diary it so well, lol!

patriarchy sucks.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty