Did you know that the internet is more than just kitten videos? (Katie 2 would like to say that goat videos are vastly superior to cat/kitten videos.) I know- we're shocked. Other things we find shocking? How atrociously bad a lot of the "career advice" available online is. This is especially true when it comes to shoes. We think we've previously mentioned that work appropriate shoes were one of our biggest struggles when it came to dressing for our careers early on. There were many factors that contributed to this being such a struggle but one of the biggest was the fact that we're pedestrian commuters. Learning the difference between commuting shoes and office shoes proved harder than it seems. Also, because there is so much hostility surrounding work shoes on workwear blogs (looking at you, Corporette!) and commuting in what's comfortable and changing at the office it was especially hard to figure out what is truly inappropriate and what out of touch anonymous internet commenters deem inappropriate.
Now that we've been working for a good long while (so we know what we're talking about) we thought it would be fun to provide you with a list of some of the worst articles about work appropriate footwear currently available on the internets. So....without further adieu.... here's our list:
- We should have known that this article from Refinery 29 was going to be problematic simply based upon the title ("Work Appropriate Shoes that are Actually Cool") and the fact that it's from Refinery 29. We're sorry but these shoes are not for the #coolgirlboss. Snark aside, this article is a great example of the disconnect between creative and conservative work environments and the fact that a lot of the online corporate fashion content is written by those in creative environments.
- Sandals are not work appropriate. Sorry to break it to you, but whoever wrote this article from The Gloss has apparently never had to dress in a business professional environment. See above regarding online corporate fashion content being written by individuals who have never dressed for a business professional environment.
- Katie 1 is an unapologetic shoe girl and heavily relied upon Corporette during her early professional days until she realized that the "community" can be rather toxic and old fashioned when it comes to perception of women in the office. This article about Louboutins in the office is an excellent example of the issues we have with Coprorette. In particular, we have issues with the comments suggesting that the Louboutin wearing woman wouldn't be taken seriously because colleagues and superiors would assume that someone else's money purchased the shoes. This should not be a thing. No one would think that about a man wearing an expensive watch or expensive shoes. Why is there a double standard? Why are women perpetrating this stereotype under the guise of advice?
- Hey Bravo - "Work Appropriate Sandals" are NOT. A. THING. EVER.
We think that this list is pretty illustrative of the issues we've found when it comes to how publications view women's fashion - there's very little middle ground and most of the advice you should really take with a grain of salt. So much of the available content either skews too casual, too creative, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, too conservative to the point of being out of touch and toxic for young professional women.
We realize there is a lot of negativity in this post, especially about a corporate fashion blog that we've found helpful at points in our career. With that being said, we should end this post on a positive, so here's a link to an article about work appropriate shoes that we actually like.
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