John Malloy's Dress for Success books may be scoffed at now, but he made a good point in them. When dress codes are "unspoken", they put people from less privileged backgrounds at a disadvantage. They don't know the unspoken rules, and so they end up looking "less professional". And like it or not, that still makes a difference in the workplace. When the rules are clear, you can choose to follow them or not, but it puts everyone on an even footing.

That's still true in today's casual workplaces, even if the floppy-tie shoulder-padded suits that Malloy recommended are no longer in style. And it's especially true for women. I worked in a very casual workplace, but I noticed that young guys could come in wearing band t-shirts and ragged jeans, and they would still be taken seriously. Women in the same outfits would be seen as "sloppy" and weren't seen as professional or effective. (And when men got out of their 20's and 30's, they faced the same issues.)

Some of these rules seem ridiculous. (Can't flat shoes be professional?) But they also illustrate a difficult problem. As a woman, it can be hard to figure out how to dress professionally for work. Magazines and TV shows depict an overly sexualized work wardrobe. I walk into most stores and I see rack after rack of clothes that I wouldn't wear to the office, even a casual office. (It's particularly hard if you're plus sized and/or have a large bust.) Everything is too low-cut, too short, too teen-age, too sloppy. I work in a place where jeans and sweaters are OK, but even I have to search through numerous stores to find something appropriate to wear. And I'm at an advantage, because I grew up seeing women in professional jobs wearing professional clothes. I had women giving me advice when I started out. I have a lot of friends who just aren't sure what to wear, especially when they're first starting out, because they never had anyone to help them. Like it or not, if you walk into work dressed like someone on Gossip Girl or 90210, you won't be taken seriously - and you may not even know why.

And by the way, men are also judged for what they wear. But for men, the dress code is much clearer, and the clothes much easier to find. You can walk into Target and find button-down shirts and ties. Go into the women's section and you'll find low-cut shirts that show your cleavage and low-rise jeans that show your underwear - and not much else.

Hmmm, I'm a subscriber to US (yes, I'm guilty), and Obama was on the cover of my magazine. Did they change the cover? I guess Jessica is a bigger draw than the Obama family...

Conley says that white collar workers are "more financially secure than ever", but there's also a higher level of uncertainty. Workplaces may be flexible today, but they also come with more risk. Your job may pay more while you're working, but your work is more likely to be interrupted by periods of job loss. More people are working on contract or freelance, which offers freedom but less stability. At least in my field, there have been periodic layoffs over the past 10-15 years - for the most part, people could find another job, but it kept you in a contant, low level state of anxiety - am I next? Someone at the edges of the middle class may have more concrete worries (will I lose my house, my savings, my health insurance) than someone in the upper income levels, but there's the same pressure - someone else could be doing my job tomorrow.

That undercurrent of fear, even if it's on an unconscious level, has been used by businesses to get workers to feel that they can never be "off duty". You're always competing, and the workers themselves ratchet the pressure up and up and up - if Joe is doing something, I've got to be doing it to, or I'll be the one left behind.

The author's conventional wisdom is that women have fewer "outlying sexualities". But I wonder if that's really true, or if it's just been hidden. There is an incredible variety of romance and erotica written by women for women, especially in the last few years when it's become more socially acceptable. (I was amazed to discover bookstores in the Bible Belt that wouldn't sell racy romance novels ten years ago and are now selling fairly hardcore erotica.)

I think this romantic erotica isn't noticed, because on one hand, romance isn't considered "feminist" and so it's not discussed by female critics, and on the other side, it's not visual like traditional porn and it tends to have an emotional component as well as just the mechanics. But there's certainly a market for this kind of thing.

I'm not a lawyer, but I have to wonder if the Provider Conscience rule applies in this case. The nurse was asked to trim the patient's IUD strings. If she had refused to do so, since she thought IUD's were wrong, then she would have been protected by the rule. But instead, she pretended to trim the strings and used that as a cover to pull out the patient's IUD. If the lawyers can prove this (and it wasn't just "an accident"), then it's hard to argue that she's covered the conscience rule.

The parallel would be a pharmacist who didn't just refuse to dispense birth control, but secretly replaced the patient's birth control pills with fake ones. I don't think that's covered.