To wear a skirt to work or not? Tales of a woman in a male dominated profession Part 2

After grad school, I did a stint as a post doc with a woman. It was a great experience to be in the company of a woman who was not only an accomplished scientist but looked gorgeous and was not afraid to dress like a girl on occasion. Coming from a lab full of males to a lab dominated by women was a sea change. Whereas as a grad student I had to learn many things on my own (I did have one awesome mentor after I'd spent a couple of years in the lab), deal with not so friendly lab mates a tough boss and a lab that looked like a twister had hit a tinkerer's garage, as a post-doc I entered a well organized lab where things shone. Black laser light shielding curtains hung from pretty shower curtain hooks. The girls in the lab hung out and actually helped each other. I was like wow!

After this, I came to an enineering company - ruled by men for the most part who had well established their individual territories. The company has less than 10% women in engineering roles. When I first started the job, I was too busy learning the job and learning how to do the working mommy - baby balancing act to have any energy left over to process what it meant to be in a male dominated environment. However, with the passing years, a few things started to get my attention. One of them was clothes. I like wearing girly clothes - you know skirts etc. Nothing flamboyant, just regular old skirts. One of the women I know who has been in this industry a very long time once told me that she never had the guts to wear anything but pants because she was sure nobody would take her seriously if she wore girly clothes. I was flummoxed - the thought had never occured to me. (I mean nobody would take me for a bimbo even if I wore a dress - I do not even remotely look like one, right?). But after I had this conversation, I began to feel a bit self conscious. Very often, I am the only woman in a room full of men of all sizes, ages, and races, and wearing a nice girly dress, pretty earrings - would that be distracting? But once that thought occured to me, I got impatient with myself for even thinking it. I mean, don't I have enough on my plate already without adding what men at work think about how I dress to it? Let's face it, the human species (like perhaps most species) exists to flaunt it's good stuff, gratify it's ego in whatever ways it can.