Women Protesting President Trump’s Request to Dress ‘Like a Woman’: Are They Serious?

A curious little skirmish happened last week that illustrated how reactionary and unreasonable things are out there right now.

President Trump reportedly wants his staff to look professional and “pulled together” at all times. And he had the nerve to ask the ladies to dress … “like women.” Gasp!

Womankind everywhere arose and took to the Twitterverse to show their outrage over such an insult! Women sent photos of themselves in every manner of professional dress under the hashtag #DressLikeaWoman in order to put the President in his place.

For my money, this is a perfect example of women overreacting, getting offended by something benign, and becoming defensive for no reason.

No one expects the female police officer to wear anything other than the uniform, just like a male police officer. No one expects the female surgeon not to wear surgical scrubs. No one expects a woman on a construction site to wear a skirt and stilettos rather than jeans and steel-toed boots. No one thinks the female soldier wears a different uniform than the men wear. Common sense, people, please.

When a job requires a specific uniform then no one expects the ladies to be dressed differently. Surely, we can all be adult enough to acknowledge that President Trump understands this, and it has nothing at all to do with his specific request. In the White House setting, a certain decorum can and should be expected, and professional dress is part of the package. It’s reasonable to ask the ladies to dress in a professional manner befitting a lady.

Men and Women Are … Different

But what’s all the fuss about anyway? If there is nothing specific about dressing “like a woman” then why does Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner bother to wear a dress these days? Why does he not continue to wear a shirt and tie and loafers? Why did he change his fashion, if it has no bearing on his supposed new gender?

Our society is trying frantically to have everything every which way all at once. And it doesn’t work. Either there is no way of dressing that is unique to the ladies, or there is. If there is, then a man wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, dress like a lady, and a lady wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, dress like a man. And if that’s the case, then there must be something unique about being either a man or a woman. There must be a distinction. Everyone celebrating “Caitlyn” is unwittingly conceding that men and women are recognizably different.

Try as we might to erase the line, we still see the difference, and we still act on it. We think and act and live according to that difference. Because that’s sane. It’s healthy and normal and good. Men and women ARE different! That’s a primary feature of the human design, not a bug. It’s not a problem to be solved, or an unfortunate obstacle to be overcome. It’s a beautiful thing to be celebrated and honored.

This #DressLikeAWoman brouhaha is women fighting the wrong fight. This is what annoys me about so many modern women. Rather than get huffy over what it might mean to “dress like a woman,” let’s defend the fact that there is such a thing as a woman, and that a man is not one! After all, if anyone can be either/or or neither/none on any given day, then what does it matter what anyone’s wearing?

I still live on planet Sanity, where men and women do indeed exist, and where they are indeed distinct and separate, and where that’s a wonderful thing. On planet Sanity, the ladies do indeed glory in lovely, feminine fashions while at the same time donning the same uniforms, scrubs and job-specific clothing that the gentlemen wear, when that’s what is required for the job. The gentlemen still get to be gentlemen, and the ladies still get to be ladies, and everyone still gets to do their jobs. Common sense reigns. It’s beautiful.

Protest This

But I digress. How many of the women who got their Tweeters in a twist over this “dress like women” business have paid money to be “entertained” by Fifty Shades of Grey? How many of those women oohed and aahed because Christian Grey was so sexy and rich and complicated that they just forgot they were watching him assault a woman under the guise of romance? How many of those women consume the garbage coming out of Hollywood that constantly treats women like objects for gratification? Rap stars are allowed to call women “bit**es” and “hoes” and shout about every crude sex act, and it’s just art and entertainment and people gobble it up. If you want to protest something, protest this.

Or this: millions of girls in this world are still genitally mutilated by a truly oppressive and violent societal code that does not consider them people with human rights.

Or this: the growing sex trafficking that steals little girls and enslaves them in the most horrifying way imaginable.

Asking the women who work in the White House to dress professionally, like women? That doesn’t even deserve a blip on the radar. American women need to stop overreacting to trivialities and save their indignation for subjects that deserve it. (For more from the author of “Women Protesting President Trump’s Request to Dress ‘Like a Woman’: Are They Serious?” please click HERE)

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