Hot take: employers shouldn't be allowed to tell you what clothes you are permitted to wear at work.
(Don't bother responding if your analysis doesn't go beyond "but the company needs it!")
@joepie91 As long as it's not harmful to others, I agree. For example, I get headaches from certain striped patterns and I find it unfortunate that they are generally allowed :)
@whreq Yep, that sort of thing I could agree with, though at that point it's only tangentially about clothes IMO - it would be the same if someone constantly made shitty comments that made others uncomfortable, for example, it's more about maintaining a safe working environment.
The more nuanced version of my take is "the baseline should be that employers do not have a say in clothing, unless they have a particularly strong-weighing reason (like safety regulations, reasonable coworker complaints, etc.)".
(But unfortunately I've found that when I lead with the nuanced version of the take, the very first thing people do is try to invert it to "the baseline should be that they can, unless there's a reason not to" as if those are equivalent)
