Why Women's Fashion in Washington, D.C., Is So Terrible—and Patriarchal
<span>In the schizophrenic work environment of the nation’s capital, female sexuality is both an asset and a liability. </span>
by Cintra Wilson
Sep 20, 2015
4 minutes
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In Washington, D.C., there is an excruciatingly narrow margin for acceptable female dress; all women, no matter how attractive or plain, no matter how many postgraduate degrees they have, or how well they fly fighter planes, walk an inescapable fashion tightrope. Their style will fall into the binary categories of either “dowdy” or “slutty”; there are virtually no fashion grey areas.
The default answer to this no-win fashion conundrum, for an alarming amount of working women, is to buy their wardrobes at Ann Taylor; a label so ubiquitous in D.C. it might as well be tattooed on the
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