But to comment on this dressing in context idea, it’s something that’s been bothering me as I’ve come into my identity as first questioning and then bisexual. I’m mean I’ve struggled with it in other contexts (i.e. not feeling as free to explore my style at home as when I was away at school).
But as I learned about LGBT culture in college, it annoyed the hell out of me that people (whether male or female) felt the need to dress to communicate their orientation. Or that the metrosexual, overly effeminate gay man/butch lesbian stereotype is applied so often, or taken as a general truth. My ideal in dressing is allowing myself to be drawn to whatever strikes me as beautiful or comfortable…why does my femininity have to be at odds with my attraction to women?

this comment is already monstrously long so I’ll just say thank you so much A for being yourself and putting that self out there in the blogosphere for people like me!

When I’m presenting at a conference, well, I’m still working this through. I used to want to present myself as a funky yet professional young academic. This desire resulted in a LOT of black sweaters paired with signature-piece jewellery and dark denim.

Then I went through a “you want to hire me; just look how professional I am” phase. This translated into blazers and trousers over what I hoped were interesting – but not at all sexy – t-shirts and shells. But seeing other grad students who were trying as hard as I was to present this image made me sad for us. Especially considering the contrast between our attire and the jeans and t-shirts more established academics wear at conferences.

This is getting way too long, so I’ll stop here. Except to add that I’m trying to work out a new conference look, but I’m not there yet. It needs to appear effortless, though, don’t you think?

So yes, I definitely change my style… college students and artsy people, I wear pretty much whatever I want and I let myself make more daring choices. And I usually get a positive response. The other groups, I’ll be honest I sometimes want to dress “up” more and try new things, but it’s often jeans and sweatpants land (which I totally get, style is not priority for all when you have 2-4 small children at home as a stay-at-home mom) and so I worry that I look too out of place and isolate myself ( which I don’t want to do since I’m already usually the youngest one in these situations) so I have a hard time with that group, because I always try to dress respectfully, but I worry that doing more daring things is gonna get me labeled a certain way… that sounds weird, but if I’m being honest, it’s true.

I work with k-12 educators and have found that they don’t much care for the “suits” coming in. It doesn’t matter so much what your task is or what PD you provide, the “suit” is a turn off. So I wear separates and feel pretty free to be creative in them, as long its still clear that I’m a professional. So while I’m in my office today I have on wool pants and boots and a denim top with scarf etc, I would probably not do the denim with a group of teachers. Unless it was friday…

As for me, I don’t change so much for audiences especially the US as I think the small variation don’t matter so much here. In Europe it would be another story. I can generalize my outfits as audience neutral. If it is an environment that can accept jeans (or pencil skirt, etc..) I would wear whatever outfit I can put together with jeans, not so much wondering about who would be there. Does that make sense? It’s a bit like going to an IBM meeting with an Apple sometimes (I might have done that, too.), but it works most of the time, LOL!