Shyheels

Shoes

Well, that may be because the overwhelming number of people who do wear wear heels, in public anyway, are women. I have travelled widely in the course of my work, to over 100 countries, and I have never yet (personally) seen a man wearing heels in public. I don't dispute that there are cultural changes taking place, such as you describe, but it is coming from a very low base. As you say, it was a long article and adding 500 words to discuss what an editor will almost certainly decide is a side issue was never really going to be on the cards - assuming the writer knew about and was interested in pursuing it, that is.

Damned

Play

Tartan

The really funny thing is that she reportedly bills herself as an actress. One assumes then that there must be all sorts of roles she would refuse to take as the costumes would not agree with her.  Yet one also can't help but suspect that if she were offered a lucrative part in a Sex and The City remake she would not tell the director to take a hike if he/she suggested wearing heels - even towering stilettos. A way would be found...

3 hours ago, meganiwish said:

Er, woman in the room!  And I can't even retreat upstairs, since you darlek chaps have unsportingly mastered stairs

I think WASP is just fine, if only for saving pencil mileage.  Perhaps it should now go lower case.

I take your point about narrow paths, because rock star, astronaut, sporting hero, inventor et al  are ever closed to MCWMs.  Your argument verges on the line of 1970s unions.  'We support our brothers' claim for a pay rise, but pay differentials must be maintained.'  So WMCM is happy for people to have more opportunities as long as he has more to keep him where he is.  I'm going to have to end here, because it appears my heart is bleeding.

WASP is an acronym. Upper case required. 

I was talking more about dress codes and activism, not blocked career paths and certainly never suggested that any if the careers you mention were closed to white middle class males. Neither are they closed to women, minorities or gays, and to the extent their paths to success are or have been made more difficult, much is being done for change. That is what I mean by activism. Nowhere have I suggested pay scales should be different, or even hinted at anything like that, or that activism on behalf of women and minorities is a bad thing. It is not. I am merely pointing out that men - specifically in terms of dress code, as per this thread - are rigidly required to conform to stereotype in ways women are not, and that men have no recourse.

Just suppose a man said no to wearing a jacket and tie on a hot day, and was sent home from work by his boss for not being presentable at a meeting. And then sobbed about the unfairness of it all onsocial media. Do you really think it would create a Twitter storm, go 'viral', generate thousands of words of self righteous and wholly supportive pity and wrath in newspapers worldwide and 130,000-plus signatures on a petition to Parliament demanding legislation to end this kind of anachronistic dress code foolishness? No. He'd be a laughing stock, told to shut up, man up and get on with it. Life's tough. There are bigger problems in the world than wearing jacket and tie etc. etc.  Would women really like to be see equality in the workplace extend to that? Be treated just the same? Or would that be that taking equality too far?

4 hours ago, Chorlini said:

I wish I had to wear 4" heels to work. If only to shut up all those complaining women. Maybe if most women actually wore heels more often then they wouldn't complain so much when wearing them. It seems like the only time 99.9% of them put on a pair is when they go to a posh party. Where they sit down most of the time. Other then that its sneakers and flats everywhere. Practice makes perfect and if you never practice you'll never become good at anything. 
 

As for this case, it seems like the usual SJW fad of the month. How dare a company forces its female employees to look smart and representable! Heresy! Quick! To the Outrage Mobile!

So true. Practice does make perfect. While I have never worn or even tried on a pair of four-inch heels I would not be so foolish as to think I could just slip on a pair and stride off to work. And then be ditzy enough to complain a hundred yards later that my feet hurt. And blame the shoes. That's why I never understand these articles written by guys who do an experimental day in heels. Even when they are not yuk-yuking self consciously, and are trying to take the thing seriously, there does not seem to be an awareness that this is something to be worked up to, and that a single day is woefully insufficient an experiment. The first day of anything involving a physical or athletic challenge is never going to be very flash.

And yes, a great cause celebre for a Twitter storm, the uktimate tempest in a teapot.

Nonsense

Absurd

No harm in wishing, but alas, in real life the imagined stipulation would almost certainly apply only to workers of the female persuasion

Carmine

Hmmm. Yes, it can certainly be argued, on one plane, that men created the situation in which they find themselves, especially in terms of what they can and cannot wear. Women as a group have had the courage of their convictions and worn what they wanted to wear, out-stared society's expectations, and made whatever style they wanted their own. Trousers and jeans being a great case in point.

Men on the other hand have always retreated when women moved into 'their' fashions - as with bright colours, adornments and heels in the 18th century. There was no room for retreat with trousers and jeans, so they merely slid over. In general, though once something has been feminised in any way, there is no collective corage or willingness to take it back, or wear whatever it is regardless.

So, yes, to that extent men have created the situation in which they find themselves. But it is also true that there are enormous social forces and expectations in play that make any push-back by men extremely risky. 

As to being a WASP or perhaps we should just say middle class white male, since at least three letters in that acronym seem to be irrelevant, there are certainly more opportunities open to such a person - but only along a certain narrow path, and only by complying with all the rules and restrictions along the way. A misstep can be disaster.

In Western societies these days there are lots of advocacies for change, enlightenment, broadening that path, easing its restrictions and making success more inclusive - and that is a good thing. But it is also highly selective.  Your white middle class male is still expected to follow the same narrow hidebound path, dress like, and play, the role of 1950s breadwinner. The changes and enlightenment are for others. There is no advocacy for him at all. And it's considered poor form for him to bring up the subject.

Rose Madder

You chimed in a mite late with that one...

Cadillac

1 hour ago, meganiwish said:

Well, as the above posts imply, the acronym has become a word in its own right.  I don't think Protestantism is a prerequisite.  Indeed, I believe that, nowadays, that's left to the conscience of the individual wasp..

I didn't suggest that WASPs are the only ones with cause for complaint, merely that they now have pigeons coming home to roost.  Time to get the pest control chap in.  I know one who pays his rent for the year dealing with wasps, of the lower-case variety.  At the moment, though, he's troubled with people calling about wasps when they're really bees (who doesn't know the difference?).

You need to work freelance, so you don't have to wear a suit, or indeed a bonnet for the bees to get in   I see your point, though.  I believe Abe Beam set up a study into it in the 70s calledi Authoritarian Clothing Requirements On New York Minorities to look into it.

Well, if protestantism is no longer a prerequisite, as WASP is now a word in its own right, it would follow that being white and Anglo-Saxon are no longer requirements either. Aside from a rather unobserved Catholicism,  I have rich strains of French and Dutch ancestry, and indeed some (a tiny bit) of American Indian and yet I know very well that I would qualify as a WASP in nearly anyone's definition. These days, anyway. That definition - put up by various adherents to PC and blinkered feminists - seems to be someone, anyone, typically male, typically white, who, according to the tyranny of political correctness, has no right to complain about any form of social injustice that is visited upon him. Ever.

True, I am a freelance and can wear whatever I please in my home office. (I do draw the line at bonnets, you are quite right there) but I do have a sense of social justice and don't care for the purring insistance of some of the Guardian columnists this past week, on the heels of the heels story, that men have a free ride when it comes to dressing for work. Men don't. Men are far, far more restricted in what they can wear - especially WASPSs

Mac

Gossip

Carrack

The Atlantic Magazine has published a remarkably in-depth feature on high heels - history, culture, design etc. A long read and quite an interesting one.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/arch-enemies/478350/

Not just English. It is a fairly universal acronym in the English speaking world. It stands for White Anglo Saxon Protestant.

It is often used pejoratively, as in the above instance, to indicate a privileged person who never suffers from discrimination.

ps: I see at9 got in just ahead of me

9 minutes ago, meganiwish said:

Always enjoyable to see a WASP complain about discrimination

Who says I am a protestant?

And the enforced wearing suits jackets and ties, and the resentment thereof, is hardly confined to WASPS! 

It's a real bee in my bonnet, so to speak

Cargo

Carry