“I’d been made to understand, from a young age, the importance of being taken seriously in professional situations. I was raised by a single mother who worked mostly as a secretary. To prepare for my future, I did typing drills and collated files when I was barely out of junior high school. Handy with a word processor and a multiline phone, I developed the kind of pleasant, capable disposition that made me hireable for jobs that normally went to older people.
What my mother didn’t prepare me for was how my clothing choices could mark me as not belonging in those professional spaces.”
Read this essay in The Walrus