Monday, July 21, 2008

The Straight Skin-ny

Caution: "Typical Male" Alert!

Back on July 4th, CNN ran this online story: How Much Skin Is Too Much At the Office? It dealt with the problem of women (and, somewhat less often, men) who wear inappropriately revealing clothes to work. Most offices have dress codes that proscribe things like bare backs or shoulders, too-short skirts, or necklines scooping down to the navel for ladies; and muscle shirts, bicycle shorts, or ratty cut-offs for men. It's all part of projecting a professional image appropriate to the business.

Many years ago when I was living in Berlin, I was in charge of day-to-day operations of a US Government office which worked closely with German agencies to process refugees and resettlers from around the world. One day, I sent one of our staff members - a young lady - home to change after she appeared for work dressed in a hot pink track suit. Clearly, it wasn't appropriate dress for the office.

But what's appropriate depends, of course, on the venue.

One of the nice things (for a man) about competitive ballroom dancing as a hobby is that you get to spend a lot of time around lovely, fit ladies in beautiful dresses, showing a lot of skin. Latin dance costumes, in particular, can be pretty impressive for their very low costume-to-exposed-flesh ratios. It isn't necessarily all great, though.

For one thing, ladies apply makeup to to attract a judge's attention from across a crowded ballroom. At a distance, they look stunning. Up close, they can look like clowns. That's not a criticism, it's just one of those things they have to put up with for being the girl.

But the thing that really grinds my gears is tattoos on women. Now, I'm no fan of tattoos on anybody, men or women, but I think they can be particularly unfortunate form of decor on ladies. I think putting a tattoo - especially a large and garish one - on a beautiful woman is a bit like painting a handlebar mustache on the Mona Lisa. To me, it looks especially bad when the lady is wearing a beautiful ball gown for which she probably paid well over a thousand dollars, and her bare back and arms are sporting tattoos that make her look like a NASCAR entry.

Santa Cruz license plates (tattoos at the small of the back, which peek out over the waistband of pants or the bottom of a dress's back) are bad enough. Yesterday, though, at the Virginia State competition, there was a lady wearing a gorgeous gown with an extremely low-cut back, which exposed a huge, whole-back, multicolored tattoo. Maybe it's just me (and yes, I'm a curmudgeonly, middle-aged geezer-in-training), but I thought the combination was awful. The lady was beautiful, her dress was beautiful, her hair was done up just right, but for me the overall effect was ruined by the enormous tattoo, which didn't even complement the colors of the dress.

Sigh.

When I lived in Germany and was working on my Masters' degree, one of the assistants at our local library was a wonderful young lady named Renee who helped me track down all sorts of arcane references for my various research papers. Renee was the quintessential punk, with her hair a different (and vivid) color every week (often different on each side, or front and back, or with a contrasting racing stripe down the middle), safety pins as earrings (and I can tell you a very funny story about that), skirts little more than wide belts, and tattoos everywhere you could see. One of the funniest things I remember from that time was watching Renee work the checkout desk with the library director, Mrs B, who was the very stereotype of the librarian - elderly, wire-rimmed glasses, white hair pulled back in a severe bun, as conservative as you could get.

Now that was culture shock.

But I digress.

Ladies, before you get that tattoo, think twice. It really doesn't do anything for you. Spend the money on some jewelry or nice clothes, rather than on that body art that may end up being, in the words of Jimmy Buffett, a Permanent Reminder of a Temporary Feeling.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - Letter-writing project update: John's letter is finished and will be mailed today, making me 4-for-5. Andrea, Amanda, and Mike have already received their letters, and I've received Andrea's reply. The letter to my daughter is next. Want a letter of your own? Send your snail-mail address to bilbo_the_blogger (at symbol) yahoo.com and I'll add you to the list. Act now. Scribes are standing (sitting, actually) by!

B.

10 comments:

Gilahi said...

Fortunately, I realized pretty early on that my tastes change fairly frequently and there was nothing at all to which I felt such an attachment that I wanted it permanently emblazoned on my body for the rest of my life. I personally have no problem with people gettting tattoos if that's what they're into, but I just know I'd end up regretting mine.

The Mistress of the Dark said...

amen to you on the tattoos. I really want to see all these women at 80 with their tats. truly it looks ridiculous. there was an old woman at the zoo with one, and it took all my willpower not to crack up.

rimafauzi said...

was gonna get one several years ago. then i thought to myself, what if i get old and wrinkly?
now i am relieved that i dont have any.. plus i have yet to see a real lady sporting a tattoo. when queen elizabeth or an us first lady has one, then i might rethink the whole thing..

Amanda said...

I used to want a tattoo but I'm glad that I chickened out since I've changed my mind about them now. Its just too permanent.

So...my letter hasn't arrived yet huh? Hmmm.....its been about 13 days?

lacochran's evil twin said...

So Agnes doesn't have "Bilbo" in a tribal motif circling her bicep?

Bilbo said...

gilahi - we're thinking as co-geezers on this one!

Andrea - glad to see you're not on the tattoo train. And you are so right...someday all these girls will be little old ladies with wrinkled and saggy tattoos that look hideous.

Rima - good decision! You're like Agnes...it's tough to improve on perfection.

Amanda - yes, stay away from the tattoos...you are beautiful enough without trying for any extra decoration. And I'll let you know as soon as the letter arrives (should be any day).

lacochran - no, Agnes passed on that particular tattoo. Thank goodness!

Jean-Luc Picard said...

How appropriate of you to mention revealing clothes. Today, a girl was at the office with a low-cut dress...I mean a REALLY low cut dress so that A LOT could be seen.

You should have seen the turn of the necks when she walked up and down the office!

Bilbo said...

Jean-Luc - it's just as well I wasn't there...I have enough problems with my neck as it is!

John A Hill said...

A friend of mine told me about a teenager (16) that was insisting on getting a tattoo. He kept insisting that it was really important to him to have a tattoo and that he was sure that he would never regret it. Finally his father gave in...on one condition, the father got to choose the tattoo.

The son reluctantly agreed and the father picked the children's character Barney the Dinosaur. As a way of explanation the father said that Barney was once the most important thing in his son's life. The son would cry if he missed an episode and had all of the toys, shirts and Barney stuff that was ever manufactured.

I guess the son realized that Barney was no longer important enough to have him tattooed and maybe tattooing wasn't that important after all!

Smart dad!

Mike said...

Comment number 10. This subject really got people talking. I'm not into tatoos myself. But I don't mind searching for them on females.

I was going to put up a link here about a non permanant body decoration - body painting. But I may just send you the links in my snail mail reply ..... which I'm workin.... thinking about.