Look at this picture -- all 4 people are considered "properly dressed in business attire".

But how come the women have to show off a huge V of skin on their chest?  If I showed up for a job interview with a big V of skin exposed, I'd be shown the door.

Why is it "appropriate", "stylish" and what have you, for women to dress this way?

It's almost as if women still consider themselves sex objects. What other purpose could "skin" be for? It certainly doesn't help with forecasting business needs, analysis, concentration, etc...

It's no wonder women still make less than men. They want to be equal, but they still want to be "sexy".  Men don't dress "sexy" in the business world. They wear professional attire.

This obviously doesn't apply to all women, or even all career women. But I've seen this kind of thing MANY times before, so I'm posting it here.

Or how about St Catherine of Sienna, apparently?:

The problem is not how women dress.  The problem is women working in the workforce as the equals of men, when they should be home watching the children.

They might not have children.

Clare.

AMEN, AMEN, AMEN, Brother Chant!

Re.: St. Catherine:  St. Catherine consulted high ranking religious ---- I doubt for this reason alone, let alone the fact that she was holy, that she dressed immodestly.  Dressing modestly was not a recent invention, but it has not always been fashionable either.  Respected women of the faith covered themselves up, and it would have been seen as the EPITOME of SHAME for a woman to show so much of her neck and colar bone to a man of the cloth, let alone the Holy Father.  She would not have been regarded so highly in her time had she dressed as she was depicted in this portrait.  This was just the artist's impression of how to depict a woman with such notoriety and respect in her time.  Apparently, he had no comprehension of Catholic piety.  

Catherine was very pious, saintly, even (lol).  She refused to be married when her parents tried to marry her off, and she preferred to be alone.  She resented fashion from a very young age and even cut her hair off, yet her parents made her dress in the fashion and she obliged, ... that is, up until she was able to take the dress she longed for, that being the modest habit of the Domincan religious.  This she took up at 15.  So, either this is a picture of a young girl who just turned 15 (or younger), and was about to become a nun, or it is a simple artistic distortion.  St. Catherine wore the Dominican habit until her death.

And in red...lol~!  

Marie Antoinette was never considered a saint, as I recall.  She actually lived the high life.

I've got it!

I found a way women can work but still take care of kids!

Every mom goes to the next house next to them to babysit the kids there!

(Actually that's a comedian's response to the issue)

Thank you for the very informative mini-bio on Marie Antoinette.

I guess the victors are the ones who write the history books -- and we all know who came out "on top" in England several hundred years ago -- and it wasn't the Catholics.

I heard several years ago that the condescending "let them eat cake" quote is false.

Matthew

Quote from: Ancilla_Indigna

Marie Antoinette was never considered a saint, as I recall.  She actually lived the high life.

That is a lie. She gave to the poor. She did charitable works before her execution. She was raised in a very Catholic environment. One can read that in Trianon (see the review here).

An excerpt from another article:
As far as I know, no evidence of a love affair has ever been presented, and the witnesses closest to the Queen always defended her purity and high morals.

To refute this calumny I make a simple point: Marie Antoinette was a very Catholic lady. As such, her greatest concern would be to die in peace with God and save her soul. If, as alleged, she would have been having a love affair with Fersen until some months before she was imprisoned, she would have made reparation before her death, which at a certain point she foresaw as a certainty. Now then, even though we have many details about her life as a prisoner in the Temple and the Conciergerie, she exhibited no such anxiety to put her soul in order during that last year and a half of her life. On the eve of her execution, Marie Antoinette wrote a last letter to her sister-in-law Elisabeth, noting: “I am calm, as people are whose consciences are clear.”

She had such a great peace of conscience that when she was sent to the guillotine, she refused the confessor offered by the revolutionaries – one of those Catholic priests who had sworn to obey the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, one of the progressivists of the time.

Actually, she received the absolution of a counter-revolutionary Catholic priest who was disguised among the populace near the scaffold. It is not certain, however, whether she knew beforehand that a priest would be there. So, if she had any scandal in her life, she would have been anxiously seeking a confessor – even that priest who had taken the oath, since he could give a valid absolution. This didn’t happen.
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There is no one also who said she had dressed frivolously but that she dressed according to the dignity accorded her. I also honestly don't quite see the immodesty in the portrait of either St. Catherine of Sienna or Marie Antoinette. I haven't heard anyone, even a Catholic priest, mention that the Queen ever dressed immodestly, even in the court portrayals done at the time.

Quo, you can put the guns away.  And while you are at it, you may show me where it is written that she was canonized.   In fact, she is not a saint because that is an objective statement.  

Yes, she gave to the poor, and so do a lot of wealthy people who are in power, some of the Catholic, some of them Catholic politicians, even.   The fashions of the time, and what is considered dignified for someone's state, not according to God's laws, but to FASHION, has never been a rule against which one measures how they please God.

While you've never heard a Catholic priest say that a Queen dressed immodestly, perhaps you've never heard also a priest say that a princess, or prince, or president, etc. was dressed immodestly.  The point is moot, as it does not infer the opposite.  What you may here is what IS modest and humble, and those examples are given by the saints.  In the Catholic faith, saints are those people who have been canonized.  We have venerables and blesseds, too.  These are even better examples than those who are not recognized, because they are approved by the Church expressly for the purpose of veneration.  This is so people do not become confused by those who lived pious lives, however, had not overcome a major fault in their lives (that would have put their souls in peril upon their death), and those who have after being reviewed and approved as such by Holy Mother Church.

There is a warped understanding of tradition on both sides of the fence.  Tradition, in the Catholic Doctrinal sense of the word, is not a simple, novel respect for things ancient and passed.  There is some truth, in this regard, to the Novus Ordo bunch, and it is this:  Older is NOT always better.  What makes something objectively better isn't even what WE deem to be good by our own conscience, but what is objectively good as seen in Divine and natural laws.  We have a greater understanding of these by doing things that will strengthen the will, not merely avoid mortal sin.  That which when observed brings us to a better understanding of Divine and natural laws is better, and for this example, that would be "tradition" in the sense of Catholic Doctrine, the saints, the Tridentine Mass, etc.  Simply avoiding sin is still living presumptiously, as it is by repeated venial sins and neglected faults that the heart hardens and the mind's eye turns away to the needs of the soul.   Isn't this the purpose of Lent, to do greater penances (than we normally do) and mortifications (than we normally do) do prepare ourselves for the one thing that is/should be our greatest objective in life:  do die a holy death?  

While giving alms is objectively a good thing, the interior life must be such that it desires sobriety and poverty of spirit.  The idea of "yesterday I gave to the poor, and today I party like a rock star" is not holy.  Such an attitude seeks to throw away the greatest wealth cheaply, this wealth being grace.  We dissipate grace by this attitude that if we do good in this life, we buy the right to be seen as holy, or that we can clear our consciences.  It is not enough to do good things, but the good things we do must begin with self-denial.  This is poverty of spirit, from which grace can be both preserved and be a door for more grace to enter.  This requisite disposition determines the disposition of the recipient for our Lord's grace in Holy Communion.

The norms of the day are not a rule by which to discern Divine or natural laws.

Mother most pure, pray for us.
St. Padre Pio, pray for us.
St. Catherine of Sienna, pray for us.


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Edit:
Gilbertgea writes,

The problem is not how women dress. The problem is women working in the workforce as the equals of men, when they should be home watching the children.

The problem is a lot more involved than you are making it.  I have no children, and if I stop working I will no longer be able to live according to my state.  I need to work to have a place to live.

We now live in an economy that does not put family first.  The plain fact of the matter is that most companies lower the prices of their products in order to create a demand.   That is the main problem today, as to why many women MUST work in order to support themselves or their families.   (Ideally, they should be managing, planning, coordinating, administrating their families, but this is not the reality of what it takes today to even exist in this world.  We need to have natural wealth to support our families, and material wealth supports natural wealth.)  Because the cost of products are lowered in order to create a demand, the workers are not paid enough to support themselves, in many cases, much less a family.  

We've all contributed to an economy that requires women to work, like it or not.  My advice to those who think women should stay home and not work, is this:  stop buying all products that are produced by cheap labor ("cheap" being not enough to support a family or even one's self).  This is not at all supporting the feminists, who LOOK for power in the workplace, but this is merely uncovering a bit of a larger scope to the issue stated, that women shouldn't be in the workplace today.  Such a statement I find absurd, because what you are saying is that I should starve to death, and so should all the widows, their families, and those whose fathers have left the families, etc.

Also, a woman SHOULD be paid according to her skills and what she can contribute (which is sometimes indicated by education) to the company.   This having been said, there are many men in executive positions that SHOULD NOT be paid as much as what they are paid, at the expense and exploitation of the workers who cannot support their families.