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Summer Style Challenge: Sweltering Outside, Shivering Inside
Are these steamy summer days and nights playing havoc with your style? Of course they are. Washington’s heat and humidity coat your skin with sweat, transform your clothes into a limp mess, and explode your hair into frizz. A summer rain soaks even the most carefully curated outfit. You lost your umbrella on the Metro. Fun times.
As if that’s not bad enough, your workplace is ruining your attempt to enjoy sleeveless dresses and sandals and hot-day friendly hairdos. Not with their office dress code. No, they do it with that evil must-not-be-touched thermostat and A/C that would frost a polar bear.
The moment you step into the humidity outside, you melt into layers of wrinkles and soggy cotton. Then you return to the germ-infested icicle zone in your office, where you shiver in the air conditioning, which is blowing out of the vent above your head and whistling down the back of your neck. Hello, summer cold and flu.
Did you know that most offices’ temperatures are set for the comfort of men wearing suits, not women in their summer dresses? You aren’t surprised? Of course not. It is the eternal male-female struggle over climate control. The men who control the climate are comfortable and, if they aren’t, they can at least take off their jackets. And the women? Women suffer.
This is the curse of the modern, environmentally controlled workplace under the thumb of some petty office despot wielding the power of the thermostat dial. Some companies call him “the building engineer.” I call him “the devil.” He laughs at your discomfort. He doesn’t care about global warming. He just cranks up the cool another notch. Does the same devil run your office’s climate control? Here are some test questions.
Is your nose red from the cold and freezing to the touch? Your hands too stiff to type?
Do you run to the restroom just to run hot water over your frigid fingers?
Must you flee at lunchtime to a sidewalk café just to warm up, despite the noise, the humidity, the diesel exhaust, and the UV rays?
Have you sneaked a small portable heater under your desk, in flagrant violation of your office’s draconian policies against Personal Warming Devices?
Then yes, your office is too frigid for women to work comfortably. No one wants to wear winter woolies when the outside temperature soars past ninety degrees and the humidity is ninety-nine percent. But you can’t do anything about the weather outside, and your employer refuses to adjust the weather inside. What to do? Plan your strategy.
Have a light yet warm wrap on hand, a jacket, a sweater, a shawl, or a large scarf. Keep one in the office in a color that will go with most of your summer clothes. I suggest black, white, navy or even red. Ditto for a cardigan sweater, if that’s your style. My vote is for the easy-to-carry shawl or scarf, which can be folded up or even tied around your tote bag when you’re outside. It’s handy when you enter a chilly restaurant or shop on your lunch break in a frigid mall.
A pair of closed-toed shoes under your desk for when your feet are freezing. Fleecy Ugg boots? Fluffy bunny slippers to slide those frozen toes into? Comfort vs. style? Your call.
Fingerless gloves, a la Bob Cratchit. These are sometimes necessary in the frostier offices just to be able to type (or scrawl ledger entries with a quill pen, like Mr. Cratchit). Can’t find them? Find your scissors and snip the fingers out of a pair of old cloth gloves, or find a pair of fingerless athletic gloves. Believe me, they work.
The cozy heater under the desk. I’m sure those are allowed in your office, right? Oh, they’re not? Go rogue. The choice may come down to policy or pleurisy. Your decision.
Hats! A little extreme to wear in the office, but they do send a message that you are seriously cold. Even better, encourage all your female coworkers to wear hats and gloves to shame your management. (As if shaming them were even possible.) And if nothing else works, coming to work in the summer heat looking like a homeless waif out of Charles Dickens in the dead of winter may embarrass your bosses. Maybe they’ll finally give you a little heat.
The good kind.
