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Workwear Hall of Fame: Wonderstretch Straight Leg Pants

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Dec. 2021 Update: There are a few colors of these pants marked down as low as $53 in the 2021 Nordstrom Half-Yearly Sale.

Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.

When we did our “best pants for work” roundup a few weeks ago, I was intrigued to see that the Nic + Zoe trousers that everyone raves about are now available in a bunch of non-black/navy options, including this pretty slate blue pant.

It reminds me of our discussion on light blue suits (recently updated!) where everyone agreed that the dustier versions of blue are more wearable than the bright blue ones. I always love red with light blue, but a neutral top (black, gray, navy, or a fresh white top for spring) is also super easy to throw on, as well as a zillion other colors.

These pants come in regular, petite, and plus sizes (also in a slim cut!) and are $128-$148 at Nordstrom and Amazon. Wonderstretch Straight Leg Pants

This post contains affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support!

Update: We're adding these pants to our Workwear Hall of Fame because they've been around for years, always make the cut in our best pants for work, keep coming out in new colors and fabrics, and getting rave reviews for their comfort, easy care, and style. Looking for comfortable pants options that are sleek and professional? We rounded up some of the best leggings substitutes in our recent discussion of whether you can wear leggings to work.

Seen a great piece you’d like to recommend? Please e-mail tps@corporette.com.

Sales of note for 12.5

And some of our latest threadjacks here at Corporette (reader questions and commentary) — see more here!

Some of our latest threadjacks include:

376 Comments

  1. Pseudo-native english speakers that have lived somewhat nomadic lives. How do you avoid developing confusing accents?

    1. I think you just embrace it as a symptom of globalization. People are increasingly accustomed to hearing different accents. I grew up in the US, lived in Francophone countries and Eastern Europe, and now live in Scotland and my accent is definitely becoming a mishmash. I’m terrified what my American/English/Scottish kid will sound like.

      1. Love it. I have a friend who grew up in Glasgow and then Northern Ireland and now lives in New Orleans. It is quite something to hear.

      2. Your kid is going to sound Scottish after he starts school. Kids’ accents are most influenced by their peers not by parents/caregivers. There will probably be a few words here and there that he mostly hears at home that he’ll pronounce with an American or English accent, but that’s about it.

      4. Yeah, I had an English friend living in the U.S. who used to laugh about the “little American boy” she was raising!

    2. I lived in England, Boston, Texas and New Jersey all before I was 12. People always told me I “talked funny” or “said words weird”. Hasn’t really impacted my life as far as I know.

    4. I’m not sure why it matters (admittedly, I’m a native English speaker who has lived in the US my whole life). If you have a particular accent you want to cultivate, it might help to listen to podcasts or tv shows from that region.

        1. If you don’t want to sound like you have a fake accent, don’t use a fake accent. Pretty simple.

          1. I think for some people it ends up being a little subconscious, not necessarily intentional, which is why she is asking about it.

    5. Just don’t sound like Dorit on RHOBH. Everything about her screams fake, including her accent.

    6. I first learned English in the US as a kid of parents who were temporarily in the US as visiting scholars, but when I went back to thr US for study abroad in college most of my friends were British, Singaporean, Kenyan, South African,
      Indian, Pakistani, Lebanese, Chinese, Egyptian, Brazilian, German, Spanish, or Greek. My accent was heavily influenced especially by my friends who spoke English as mother tongue — study abroad was awesome, but I had what my friends called a bastardized accent. The accent actually made me super self conscious whenever I had to talk to people with US accents (in the US).

      It’s interesting because I don’t have this problem with my native language (I always revert back to my dialect as a fallback), and I don’t speak my other languages (French, German, Spanish, Japanese) well enough to notice the difference — I just wouldn’t understand if it’s in a different accent. So for me this problem is unique to English.

      FWIW, I find that consciously trying to stick to my “original accent” in which I learned English (i.e. west coast US) whenever I speak, and being primarily exposed to audio content (read: Netflix) from the US seems to work better for me in terms of getting the various accents less mixed up. If I’m in a non-English speaking country for an extended time, I will usually revert back to the “original (for me) accent”. I am still super easily influenced by the accent spoken in my vicinity though, and have no real tricks up my sleeve.

    7. Slightly off-topic: does anyone else unwittingly pick up accents when traveling, and sometimes they stick for a while? I’m from the neutral-accented Midwest. I think it’s called chameleon effect, somehow I not only pick up accents, but I’m that person who rarely gets pegged as a tourist in Europe/Canada/UK/Iceland etc. I can usually lose accents pretty easily when I leave the place, but if I go to the South, a drawl will creep in for weeks.

      1. Yeah, I mean, that’s a pretty common thing to pick up the speech patterns and inflections of the people around you.

      2. My parents are southern (but coastal and from an area known for almost Elizabethan speech). I grew up in New Yawk. I have a feeling that I sound horrid and maybe I should watch My Fair Lady and just have a laugh about it.

      3. After a summer in Dublin, my inner monologue had an Irish accent and I had to be very conscious to keep it out of my actual speech. The spoken accent was not nearly as charming/accurate as it was in my head and I sounded like an idiot.

      4. I do. And after 10 days in Australia, all of the voices of characters in books I read had Australian accents for at least 2 more weeks. I was born in NY, grew up in the DMV, and moved south. In college, I developed a southern accent, which I then worked to lose in response to very negative stereotyping. I think the result is a little strange, and people have certainly suggested at times that I sound foreign. Not good. Not sure how to fix it.

      5. There’s no such thing as the “neutral-accented midwest.” Every region has an accent. Everyone has an accent. People in the midwest *think* they don’t have an accent, but they do.

        1. I think they do have very “neutral” vowels though, and I suspect that does them extra susceptible to picking up other accents?

    8. I don’t. I’m a military brat with a job that involves international travel. My chosen accent is a relatively inflectionless Midwestern US accent, but if I spend time in a place with a significantly different accent or talk to someone with that accent for long enough, I’ll start talking like that.

      I’ve just accepted that I’m an accent chameleon and half the people who meet me will ask where I’m from.

    9. I don’t. I speak with a slight New Jersey accent peppered with the odd Aussie slang term or pronunciation. I could code switch perfectly but it’s my heritage and I like it!

    10. Probably not helpful, but I love those confusing accent. I worked with a South American who had lived in Australia for 10 years, literally my favorite person to listen to talk. I have an ear for accents and love when one stumps me as its usually a person who lived an interesting life.

      1. Same- I have a Chinese friend who immigrated to Australia as a kid… his accent is awesome. At first you think it’s typically Australian, than you start hearing all these twangs of what a Chinese accent sounds like, but different from what you’d hear in the US.

    11. People can never place me from looks as I’m a fairly generic dark haired white person (parents born in the Mediterranean), but the second I open my mouth people can place me from Canada even though I think I speak very neutrally.

    12. I was a military brat and have lived in several states in the US, as well as a few other countries, and I spent a year in England once upon a time.

      My accent is based on a Boston accent, because both my parents were from Boston. It’s modified–I don’t put “r” on the end of words ending in “a” and I don’t “pahk the caaa in Havahd yahd,” but people who know can generally recognize that I’m from New England. Also, having lived in New England as an adult hasn’t hurt.

      When I was a kid I was sometimes teased about the way I talked and I chose to try and mimic the local accent just to fit in a bit better. I was over that by high school. I do remember once in high school a teacher made the entire class read something out loud and we hit the word “life” and you could tell I wasn’t pronouncing it the way everyone else in the class did–I said “life” and the rest of the class was something like “luof” (that was in center city Philly).

      Where I tend to stick out a bit as an adult is in word choice and pronunciation, not accent. Many New Englanders pronounce the “u” in “aunt.” We don’t say “ant.” I’ve been called stuck-up for that. And my parents said “cellar” for “basement” and “bubbler” for “water/drinking fountain,” things like that. As a kid, I remember learning the local words for things and using those words in school, but using the words my parents used at home. Rubber band, elastic, gum band. Hoagie, hero, poor boy, sub.

    13. English is my fifth language, but I think I have native-level fluency. I’ve lived in the US for about twenty years, but before that lived in central asia/eastern europe/middle east. Apparently I have some sort of accent, as I am often mistaken for a Canadian (fine by me).

    14. Late to this, but very interesting post!

      I went to an international American school in Asia so while my English *mostly* sounds like a mix of Standard American English and West Coast American English, occasionally I’ll pronounce some words with a British accent and it totally throws people off if I don’t catch myself.

  2. Are pants suits still considered less formal/conservative than skirt suits these days?

    1. I think this depends where you live- in more liberal cities (admittedly the only ones I’ve lived in, so can’t speak for the south/mid-west), I think they are fine.

      1. If it snows/gets cold where you live, then pants = skirts in level of formality. (not that they don’t in other places, but that definitely seems to be the rule in the cold places I’ve been).

  3. I’m curious about suiting since we’ve spoken about it so much lately. How often do you wear a traditional suit? (“Suit” defined here in the menswear sense of the word, meaning a matching top and bottom.)

    City:
    Industry:
    Occasions you wear a suit: Never/interviews only/interviews and the rare Very Big Work Event/a couple times a month/a couple times a week/daily

    1. Houston
      Mental Health/Medical
      Haven’t worn a suit in decades; for court testimony only
      Wear a Boden dress and consigment sourced St John jacket daily

    2. City: Small Town PA
      Industry: Law
      Occasions: A couple times a week, for court appearances, depositions, client meetings, and interviews

    3. City: Coastal SEUS (small town)
      Industry: Law
      Almost never wear a suit – only for superior court matters or domestic trials, for traffic court or domestic motions, I usually wear suiting separates or pants and a topper. Because we are a beach town, our whole community is generally more casual.

    4. City: DC
      Industry: gov’t attorney
      Almost never wear a suit, maybe a couple of times a year for interviews and really big work events

    5. City: Suburb of a mid-sized city in the Mid Atlantic region
      Industry: Law (transactional)
      Suit: Interview only – for more formal networking events, a polished dress has done the trick. Most of the networking I do is more low-key so what I wear to work is fine.

    6. City: All over the country, mostly state capitals
      Industry: Research and consulting, adjacent to law and academia
      Occasion: Only for legislative testimony, but planning to purchase a matching dress and blazer for these occasions so I will never have to wear a skirt or pants suit again

    7. City: NYC
      Industry: law
      Occasions: court, big client negotiations; otherwise rarely

      1. +1

        City: Boston
        Industry: law (so suit jacket is always hanging in office for emergency events)
        Occasions: court, clients coming to office, depositions/EUOs, a more formal client/industry event where I want to impress.

    8. City: ATL
      Industry: Higher Ed
      Wear a full suit maybe once a year for an interview or a really big presentation, but even in most of those cases, separates would probably be acceptable, I just prefer the suit.

    9. Canada.
      Non-profit.
      Only wear a suit for job interviews. (I’m in jeans at work right now!)

    10. City: SEUS, mid-small city
      Industry: higher ed administration
      Occasions you wear a suit: rarely, maybe 2-3 times a year for big presentations/meetings, and to interview

      1. I should add: when/if I do wear a suit, it’s probably a dress/jacket suit, allowing me to ditch the suit jacket for a nonMMLF jardigan when I’m not “on.”

        I usually wear dresses and a structured sweater jacket, or a slim ankle pant with a blouse. Flats or low heels.

    11. City: London, England
      Industry – Big Law (transactional)
      When: Never – I no longer own a suit since my law school interview suit went out in a clear out. I have blazers I would wear for client meetings/events/speaking engagements etc but I would just wear it with separates. In fact my only really nice blazer is bright red, I don’t really have anything neutral so if I needed it, I would have to go shopping!

    12. SEUS big city
      BigLaw

      I need often for client meetings and try to wear weekly anyway just to make sure everything fits and suits me b/c I often get not a lot of notice. I also play around with suiting pieces.

      I can wear jeans to work but save for bad weather when I look like an LL Bean ad.

      1. This may matter: I am actually really senior, so I feel that I meet more very senior (age and title) people within companies and they all wear suits. And they know what you charge them and they really expect you to look the part. Plus, Witt being both female and southern, I feel that I have a couple of stereotypes to overcome, especially in finance where is also the girls-are-bad-at-Math thing going on, which lawyers usually joke about.

        TLDR: it is my armor

    13. Midsized city on the East Coast.
      Academia
      Court appearances (I occasionally serve as an expert witness). I used to wear them for job interviews, but I don’t plan on ever doing one of those again. Even if I did, I’d probably do a dress and jacket rather than a suit.

    14. City: San Francisco
      Industry: Finance
      I wear a suit never. I don’t even have one anymore. I wore a suit-like look to a meeting yesterday but it was a matching skirt and top plus a non matching jacket. I would only wear such looks for external things. Never in the office. If I were to have a job interview I still wouldn’t wear a full matching suit.

      1. +1 – don’t own one, can’t imagine why I’d buy one. In law, in SF.

      2. Also SF.
        Lawyer at an engineering company.
        I never wear suits- at most a black skirt, shell & heels for an interview for a new position.
        I think suits in CA are super rare and wearing non-hoodies is considered dressy (being a little tongue in cheek, but barely).

      3. Also SF.
        Transactional estate planning attorney. I wear a suit 2-3 times a week and have one hanging on the back of my door for the occasional emergency client meeting or court appearance.

    15. Des Moines
      Law
      Suit – full suit 1-2x/week, dress or skirt/pants + blouse the rest of the week. Dresses range from an Ann Taylor print to a sheath with a blazer.

    16. City: NYC
      Industry: Investment Banking
      I wear a suits weekly/monthly. Personal preference.

    17. City: South Central, PA
      Industry: Legal Adjacent – Manufacturing/Technology Company
      When: never/interviews only.

      I think I only have one suit that fits relatively well at this point, which has become my interview suit. Otherwise, we are business casual. I am rarely customer facing, but the customers I interact with are either in an industry where jeans are common or are also business casual. I don’t meet with high level execs.

    18. City: DC
      Industry: Law, gov’t attorney (appellate)
      Occasions: About 6 times a year for court

    19. City: Midwest college town
      Industry: Higher ed
      Occasions you wear a suit: The last time I wore one was when I interviewed for this job 10+ years ago. And I was told I was the only interviewee who wore a suit. So I’m going with “never.”

    20. City: Atlanta
      Industry: Engineering
      Have never worn a suit, even to interviews. Dress pants/skirt with a tucked in top for my interviews and presentations. Casual wears (non jeans) otherwise.

    21. Toronto
      Litigator
      I wear a real suit maybe 1-2 times per week depending on what is going on. We wear robes to court mostly so that somewhat reduces my suit wearing needs.

    22. City: Philadelphia
      Industry: Law/healthcare
      Occasions you wear a suit: interviews and the rare Very Big Work Event. For networking events or just Big Work Events, I’ll typically wear either a long-sleeved dress or a sheath + non matching blazer.

    23. City: Chicago + frequent domestic travel
      Industry: tech for the public sector (heath care, education, government)
      Occasions you wear a suit: Never. I wore a black sheath dress with a black tweedy jacket to this interview, and wear non-matching separates to any other formal meetings- maybe once a month or once a quarter. Most of the time I’m in MM Lafleur Etsuko dresses, or ankle pants and a sweater, or dark jeans and a jacket. I wear a lot of pointy flats, or 1-2 inch block heels with all of the above outfits.

    24. City: Seattle
      Industry: Law (legal aid)
      Occasions: Never. I don’t own one. I wear a black dress with a blazer to interviews or important work events.
      Most of the time I’m in some iteration of colored Rockstar jeans, jeans, a blouse, and boots or flats. Sometimes a casual dress. Once every 5-6 months a Lands End sheath dress.

    25. Ontario, Canada
      Finance
      Wear a suit 2-3 times a week. Blazer and dress combo if not.

    26. City: Large SEUS
      Industry: Mid-Law/Litigation Partner
      Occasions: I wear a suit about once a week for court, though as I’ve gotten older (a bit passed 40 now), I wear full suits less and less and wear dresses or skirts with fun blazers more. I think I’ve only actually broken out a complete suit for a jury trial in the last 12 months. Every other day, I run the spectrum from ponte knit-nearly-leggings pants to dresses. Today I’m in a wrap dress which is pretty standard.

    27. Austin
      Legal
      Interviews or court (to court only if I feel like it, a dress or skirt with a non-matching blazer is also fine)

    28. NE US near major city
      Legal/Heathcare
      More often then not (definitely if there’s anything on my calendar), and if not a full suit then suiting separates (if I think I’m just going to be in my office all day). Hospital administration seems to be a holdout for the business formal environment.

      1. +1 Same here and whyyy?? I wear a suit (or something resembling a suit) every day unless I know I don’t have any meetings (maybe once a week or every other week). Half of my meetings are with people in scrubs (or MDs in business casual), so it honestly feels a bit silly and I think makes administrators stick out in a way that’s not always helpful.

    29. Mid-size southwestern city
      Attorney
      Wear suits only for court (and I am an appellate attorney, so only have oral argument in our state intermediate and supreme court a few times a year), occasionally wear a suit for presentations or meeting with opposing counsel, also only a few times a year. Our area (both geographically and niche area of law) are very casual except when in court.

    31. City: MSP
      Industry: Sales
      Occasions you wear a suit: Actual suit: 2x in the past 3 years for important corporate pitches. Suit adjacent: ~12 times a year for pitches, fundraisers, networking events. Usually blackwatch blazer + black sheath dress in winter, or tan J.Crew blazer + sheath dress.

    33. Houston
      In-House Legal Dept. for Fortune 50 Company – Oil & Gas
      I wear suits 2x a month when making presentations or meeting with executives – our executives wear suits on daily basis, so I have to look the part when I meet with them. I wear separates other days because you never know when a meeting with an executive will pop up on you calendar.

    34. City: Small, Northeastern capital city
      Industry: Government
      Occasions you wear a suit: Everyday, a suit (or dress with blazer) during legislative session, otherwise business formal/casual/depends what is going on in the office that day

    35. City: SEUS
      Industry: Law
      Occasions you wear a suit: About once or twice a week, for a regular office day. Our dress code is business formal, and my boss is very much an appearance person. The other days, I wear formal dresses or suit separates, unless I know my boss won’t be in the office and I can just shut my door. We have (business) casual Fridays.

    36. Salt Lake City
      Law (attorney in a hybrid litigation/transaction practice)
      Occasions you wear a suit: Interviews, court (maybe 6 times a year), firm photographs (once every three years)
      Occasions you wear a blazer: client meetings, depositions, networking functions (overall probably once or twice a week)

    37. City: Palo Alto
      Industry: Law
      I’ve worn a suit for most interviews, for the rare times I’ve gone to court, and sometimes when giving a CLE. Maybe important client meetings when I was super junior?

      Last I tried, it was ridiculously hard to get a wool nice suit around here. Nordstrom had like 3 suits that were court-appropriate and there were all polyester and $800+.

      1. +1, I shop online for suits, the ones in the stores tend to be inexpensive interview suits for recent grads.

    38. NYC
      Healthcare Finance
      1-3X/month for big meetings and to keep my boss from suspecting I’m interviewing.

    39. Minneapolis
      Architect
      Suit: job interviews, project interviews and important project presentations
      Blazer: client meetings (depends on how formal client is) one to twice a week. I am often cold, so a blazer keeps me warmer. I am also in a male dominated field. A blazer helps me to be taken more seriously. My workplace is casual. Sometimes I am wearing a blazer with jeans.

    40. Rural SEUS
      Government lawyer

      5+ times per month, for all court appearances regardless of whether it is a minor or major appearance. Closed toe conservative pumps and stockings with a skirt suit are also the norm. I think we are a weird little pocket of old style business formal.

    41. “Biglaw” is SEUS city.
      Associate.

      My annual OCI trip to my alma mater or if I have to see a client in person (not really a thing).

    42. City: Chicago
      Industry: Legal
      Occasions you wear a suit: Court hearing, non-court adjudications/hearings, CLE presentation or other formal talk to a large group of lawyers or potential clients. I also occasionally wear suits to a networking event or to the office when I have client meetings, but usually for client meetings and networking I wear my usual business casual, which veers towards casual.

    43. City: LA, but practice all over the country
      Industry: litigation
      Occasions: Only court, so about once a month (and I have become a huge fan of the suiting dress/jacket combo). I don’t wear a suit for client meetings, depositions, or mediations.

    44. City: Midwest MidLaw
      Industry: Litigation and litigation-adjacent law
      Occasions: Actual suits with traditional pumps and hose are for appellate arguments, federal court hearings where I do not know the judge at all, a handful of other judges who roll old school, and interviews. I consider dress + jacket in an identical fabric an equivalent to a suit and freely substitute. Dress + jacket (identical fabric or not) suffices for all other federal court, state court and ADR; hose optional there and peep toes/slingbacks or flats generally are all right. Sometimes I indulge in dress + cardigan for less formal court to blend in (probate/outstate judges I know well). Office wear generally runs less formal, right down to jeans on winter Fridays with no court or client meetings.

    45. City: mid-sized city on “rest of US” locality pay scale
      Industry: law (judicial law clerk)
      Occasions: pretty much daily, though I mix suiting separates (e.g., navy dress with gray jacket) on occasion when I won’t be in court.

    46. Location: Mid sized Pacific Northwest City
      Job: Law, state level prosecutor
      Suit: I have two sections of my wardrobe now. Daily MM Lafeur washable pieces and trial suits. If I am in a jury trial, it’s a full suit, panty hose etc. Daily court appearances are MM Lafleur dresses and Jardigans. I also have a washable jacket from the line. This strategy keeps my trial suits fresh for when I need them and cuts down on dry cleaning significantly due to washable daily clothes.

    47. Location: Los Angeles
      Job: Government, Engineering
      Suit: 2-4 times a month to City Council meetings, big meetings/ presentations, job interviews.

  4. Any recommendations for Munich in December? We’ll be there for just over a week without plans other than the Christmas markets. We’re pretty relaxed travelers and mostly like to visit a few of the must-see sights, walk everywhere (getting lost and discovering things), and eat. What advice do you have?

    Also, I prefer to stay in apartments over hotels but I’m feeling overwhelmed by the options, so I’d also be interested in knowing if there are any particular neighborhoods you like or even specific VRBO recommendations if you have any. Thanks!

    1. Dachau memorial and Neuschwanstein castle were short day trips from Munich and were on the “must see” list for Munich, quite doable if you’re open to trekking out by train a bit. Otherwise my friends and I stayed around the old city except to go tp various -gartens (it was summertime). Munich can be quite spread out so staying a few blocks from Marienplatz close to the touristy attractions was a plus for us.

    2. Agree with Junior Associate to stay as near to Marianplatz as possible. More than a week in Munich would be a long time for me, so I’d definitely do a couple day trips, or perhaps even a weekend to Salzburg and further south to the Salzkammergut/Wolfgangsee markets.
      https://www.salzkammergut.at/en/detail/article/3598-advent-markets-in-the-salzkammergut-1.html
      If you’d like to do Dachau, I really recommend a guided tour, we used Viator. We met the guide at the Marienplatz and they took us out there. If you don’t have a guide, it’s a lot of wandering around and reading information plaques, I felt like we got so much more out of it with a guide. It’s a solid half-day+ activity.
      Neuschwanstein would be beautiful in the winter. Book your tickets ahead to avoid a long long line and possible day-of sell-out. I really enjoyed the museum out there, we did the combo ticket with both palaces and museum.

    3. When I went a few years ago, a reader here (In-House Europe) helped me a lot with picking a hotel. We ended up at one near the train station because it was so convenient to get in and out, but it was loud because there was a hostel next door. I loved Munich! Only spent a couple of days there (we started in Vienna, then headed west to Salzburg, then to Munich), but the city is beautiful. The giant department store (Karstadt) reminds me of the big department stores in US cities back in the 70s. I bought boots and sweaters there that I still have. Also, the pastry place at the base of it, in the subway station was soooo good. Those flaky pastries with pepitas or sunflower seeds are the bomb. Definitely go to the art museums and see the big churches.

    4. Yes, definitely stay near the Marienplatz! Eat at the Viktualienmarkt!

      Berchtesgaden is beautiful (it was a little uncomfortable to me that they made it into a restaurant, so we didn’t eat there, but the views were incredible). Also highly recommend Neuschwanstein and Herrenchiemsee (a replica of Versailles by crazy Ludwig). We did a day trip to Chiemsee, which was gorgeous, but we did it in the summer, so not sure about the winter.

      1. Forgot to add – we stayed at Hotel Derag, which is a “living hotel” near the Isar River – it was very comfortable, and you can either get a hotel room-style room or an apartment style. And their breakfast buffet was TO DIE FOR. I still think about it all the time.

  5. I’ve been dating my girlfriend for almost two years now, and living together for 8 months. We’re starting to talk marriage. I love the idea of a future with her, but I also came out of a very religious upbringing where marriage was talked about as a sacred covenant between a couple and God, and where everyone talked about feeling a divine confirmation that their spouse was the right one. Outside of that religious environment, I’m trying to figure out what marriage actually means, beyond a legal demonstration of commitment (and the associated government benefits, now we can actually get ’em!)

    What does marriage mean to you, and how did you know you wanted to take that step?

    1. I think it was about becoming a family (whether or not kids were in the plan). When we got married, I felt like we became a team, with shared goals and ambitions. This in some ways involved a process of reorienting our lives – becoming a family of two rather than an extension of our families of origins. For us, there was a pragmatic consideration around visas and being able to stay in the same country.

      1. 100% agree with the becoming a family, which was important to us, but also valued by others. I know other people can F right off with their opinions of my relationship, but realistically, I live in the upper midwest and our marriage solidified our commitment to each other to the outside world in a way that would not have happened otherwise.

        1. This. My husband and I are both traditionally religious although different religions. It’s not that other people’s opinions matter – but at the same time, they add validity.
          His parents got divorced when he was 9. His dad remarried within the year.
          To me, the marriage/wedding/ceremony makes it harder to break up, walk out, end it. We know other people are in the relationship with us – people we can turn to for financial and emotional assistance (and, we have) and we too have obligations as a couple and family to our friends and family (and, we have). To us, truly, positively, marriage is an emotional commitment and also, oddly, a commitment within our communities, too.

      2. Raised catholic, now atheist, married to a jew (straight couple)- we dated & lived together for years before marrying… I agree with a lot of others that it the sealing of a commitment to each other & to our community. Given the fact that we lived together for so long before marriage, I was really surprised at everyone’s reaction to our marriage— I really felt like there was a shift on how others felt our relationship was ‘permanent’ after that (say what you will about divorce rates). Plus, it’s like the last moment where you get to celebrate with a bunch of family & everyone says lovely things about you as a couple– which I didn’t think mattered before it happened, but was sure nice to have. Also, it gives you unquestionable legal protections, which (as lawyers) we felt were super important…. and I think I would feel doubly this way if I were a gay couple, and triply with the addition of kids in either scenario.

      3. Thank you stating you can be a family without kids. You expressed my reasons exactly. I’ve also always bristled at the question asked after marriage “when are you going to start a family” – my answer has always been “uh, we did when we got married”.

    2. Marriage is a symbol of the commitment to create a lifelong partnership based on love. It’s a covenant between you and society. Even religious people generally have very public wedding celebrations full of family and friends because it’s about much more than a religious blessing.

    3. I had the same thought during my wedding planning process – like why does this matter so much to us? I’m sure part of it is just the cultural expectations from growing up with the assumption that I’d get married one day. But there is something about, as CB said, being a team – even though our functional lives didn’t change much from dating to being engaged to being married (the big switch was moving in together after 4 years of long distance – including our first married year), there was a mental shift that all of burdens/blessings/big decisions were ours together.

    4. Neither my husband nor I are religious. He believes in some kind of higher power but not in going to church. I am an atheist. So there was no religious reason we got married. We pay a significant marriage penalty in taxes for being married, and we knew we would, so there had to be a good reason for us to do it.

      It was because we legally became a family when we got married. It was because if I ended up in the hospital, he would be my next of kin, and vice verse. The symbolic act of choosing each other was also important to us in a non-religious way, and we invited people who were important to us to witness it on our wedding day.

      The last reason is community property and inheritance. Our house can pass from jointly owned to the surviving spouse without probate. We could have set this up in a trust, so that’s not the only reason for getting married, but it’s nice to know the house and our other significant assets are truly ours together.

      I’m not wild about some other aspects of the community property laws, but since we have made it 20 years I’m hopeful that we will never have to deal with how they come into play in divorce.

    5. I think its about having your commitment witnessed by the people who will support you and help you honor it, amd also potentially call you out and remind you what it means. And i say that as someone who had a wedding so small many would call it an elopement, including highly religionuous freinds who explicitly tried to teach me traditional gender roles, but excluded so many hypocritical judgemental family members.

    6. Not religious but come from an Anglican tradition and grew up in Catholic area.

      I think it is standing up publicly to say that “this is my forever person” mutually with a group of people who love and support you.

      That and some legal rights in case one of you is in the hospital or dies unexpectedly.

      1. Yes, this: proclaiming publicly that “this is my person, forever” is surprisingly powerful, even if it seems like it shouldn’t be. Or as I told a friend recently, telling the *government” that this is my person, forever, is a big deal!

    7. There was a really good essay on A Practical Wedding this week that you might find helpful – What Happens To Your Religious Marriage When You Lose Your Faith? It’s about a couple who was raised very religious and viewed their marriage as a contract with God, and how they redefined their marriage when they left their church.

    8. My wife and were both raised Catholic but left the church as young adults. We’re agnostic and our wedding was nonreligious.

      We got married young and I had some lingering “what ifs” after we got engaged, but any future I envisioned for myself seemed sadder without her in it. We were partners and friends from day one. I see our marriage as commitment to love and shelter each other, and support each other in becoming the best versions of ourselves. Instead of vows I read “Masons” by Seamus Heaney and I always remember that poem when I think about our marriage.

    9. This is a great question! I love reading the responses. My husband and I are both religious-Ish and got married in the church. But to me the biggest thing about marriage was saying “this is my person, this is my family, we are a team and put each other first above everyone else”. We pay a marriage penalty on taxes but there are a ton of small legal benefits that come from being married (even little things like having that person be your next of kin is actually very important to me). Marriage to me is about the people but also a sort of social contract. I definitely noticed a difference in how “seriously” take our relationship now that we are married.

      1. A lot of what you’ve said resonates with me too – religious-ish but still married in the church, the most important part was the declaration that “we are a team unto ourselves now,” etc. We’re very young and had never lived together before we got married, so the change to having our relationship “taken seriously” was a bit different than it might have been if we’d lived together for five years and various great-aunties were still dismissive of us after all that time. But getting married sort of “grew us up” in our parents’ eyes, me especially, and I’m young enough to be REALLY excited that my mom finally views me as an adult and not somebody she still has to parent.

    10. I agree with the posters above about being a symbol of commitment and family (although we are child-free by choice, we are still a family).

      My husband and I are both atheists and come from atheist/agnostic families. My husband never really thought he would get married because he saw it as a religious thing and he is not religious, whereas I never looked at the two being connected. His first wife was Jewish and it was important to her so he was ok with it. When we got together he said he hadn’t planned on getting married the first time, let alone the second, because for him the commitment is not about being married or not married (and while I agree, I did want to get married), so I had to really think about my reasons. Of course, he wanted to marry me (and he is not the type to have proposed if he didn’t), but if I had said I wasn’t bothered, he would have been ok with that.

    11. My husband and I initially got married b/c that was the only way I could get onto his health insurance (I was unemployed). We just had our 20th anniversary, and were talking about whether being married had made any real difference for us (we lived together for 3 years prior to getting married). Our consensus was that it hadn’t mattered for our relationship, but made explaining ourselves to other folks easier and reduced legal/tax complications a lot.

    12. Lesbian lawyer in the South – we got married shortly after it was legal in our state. We had been together almost 10 years before that. It was very important to me to wait until it was legal in our state, but it was also important for me to get married as soon as possible. Before our ceremony, my focus was completely on the legal protections that come from being married. We are both lawyers and could have legally protected ourselves in most instances. However, there are random things you can’t protect yourself from. For example, right before Obergefell there were several reported instances of hospitals in my state that denied visitation to unmarried same-sex partners. I wanted that marriage certificate so I could at least have a fighting chance of proving my relationship to my now wife.
      After the ceremony, the concept of marriage has taken on more emotional meaning for me. I’m struggling with how to articulate it but I will echo to the concept of “we are a team” that others stated above.
      I’m not religious (and was raised in a household very suspicious of religion), but I consider civil marriage to be a separate concept from a religious ceremony that solemnizes a marriage. Civil marriage is the legal recognition of your relationship which comes with a lot of shortcuts to legal protections. A religious ceremony of marriage is a ritual that may come with certain religious significance.

    13. I think the meaning of marriage to me has grown as I’ve been married. But to me, marriage about a commitment to and partnership with another person. The fact that we’re married has mattered during some rough spots in our relationship or just in life generally. It’s also been important when making some big decisions, where we’ve either had to compromise with each other as a team, or we had to “grow up” and make decisions that our families of origin didn’t exactly approve of.

    14. As a counterpoint, we consider ourselves a family and are fully committed to each other (have a child and a dog, live together, share finances, etc) but are not legally married. It has zero consequences other than some additional paperwork we had to do. Once we had a kid, our relatives stopped talking about a wedding entirely and dote on their grandkid/niece instead. However, we would probably have to work harder to prove we are a family without marriage if we did not have a child. Also, our families are atheists, so of course it will be different with a religious crowd.

    15. We got married after 10+ years together for immigration reasons primarily. We get hit hard by the marriage penalty, and no other benefits aside from my husband becoming an LPR outweigh that. I honestly don’t feel any different now that we are married. We were already committed to each other.

  6. Can anyone recommend a good nail strengthener? I’ve tried everything possible that I can buy online, at Ulta or a drug store. Nothing works. I’m taking those gummy vitamins for hair/nails; been taking them for 6 months and still nothing. My nails grow, just peel really bad. I’m looking for a dark horse that I haven’t tried….TIA!!

    1. I would stop painting your nails and trim them short every week, then file the edges to smooth them out. Think of it like trimming split ends. May take a few months for them to grow past it.

      1. I’ve had peeling and weak nails all my life. I take the nails/hair vitamins and maybe there’s a small difference. I used to bemoan the way my nails look because I kept trying to grow them long but they would look terrible (tearing, peeling, splitting). My nails are now kept short and nicely filed and look nice. They aren’t the fancy nails that everyone else seems to be able to keep, but it’s what I can do with what I’ve got.

      1. Yes, I’ve tried it!! Didn’t work!! Thanks for the suggestion though…

    3. My nails have peeled the entire time I have been alive. I have tried everything and nothing really works completely. I paint my nails every week so that takes care of it for me.

      Make sure you are only filing in one direction, use gloves when you wash dishes and clean, try to otherwise minimize your nails exposure to water, use hand moisturizer regularly, and keep taking the gummy vitamins. That’s as good as it gets for me, but it’s not perfect, which is another reason I paint my nails every week. That’s probably not helping, but at least I can’t see it and pick at it!

      1. I have the same problem. Gel nail polish looks nice for about two weeks and doesn’t chip, but then it cracks because my nails are so thin and bendy. I cannot do acrylics because it eats too much of my nail.

        Keeping them short and neat is the only thing that will do it.

    4. Mine have always been really bendy and peely. It’s just how my nails are. I’m completely healthy. So like someone else said, I just keep them short and neat.

    5. If it fits with your diet, eat Jello (yes, really) and give your nails a nice long vacation from polish and products. Trim neatly, file the ends, don’t buff or file the top surfaces. Let them grow out for a few months.

      1. I mean, keep them trimmed and filed neatly for a few months, without polish or products. Not let them grow without attention for a few months…

    7. There is a product for horses called hoof maker that is extraordinary.

      I leaned this because I used to put it on my horse’s hooves with my hands, and at one point I started to have trouble clipping my nails because they were so strong.

  7. Why does every mommy blogger and/or mom with a baby girl and an Instagram account put huge tie-on bows or wraps around their babies’ bald heads? I never saw this until the last few years or so and now I can’t recall the last picture of a baby girl I’ve seen that didn’t have one. Seems odd to wear a hair bow when you’re bald and who cares if strangers don’t know your baby is a girl?

    1. It’s definitely not just an influencer thing. I’ve never put anything on my daughter’s head because she hates stuff oner head and it seems painful. But she’s always being mistaken for a boy and when we say “actually she’s a girl” people say “oh I thought she looked feminine but she didn’t have a bow!” Um, ok…

      1. No kids here, but I know my mom put bows/ribbons on my practically-bald-until-I-was-2 head in the 80’s so that I wouldn’t be mistaken for a boy (probably because she did not enjoy the “is this a boy?” questions from strangers).

    2. I dunno, I think they’re kind of cute, and I don’t just dress my kid cute for strangers. (They’re also a giant pain in the neck, though, so she never wears hers.)

    3. I don’t care for it either, and there’s definitely something disturbing about an adult performing a babies gender. But tbf, the parents I’ve talked to in real life mostly fo it because their babies heads look super huge and bald in photos, making their cute faces look less prominent.

        1. Not for the same reason TBH, but I have a lot of little bear hats for my baby boy. I made him, I want to accessorize him.

    5. It’s definitely not a new thing. I’m wearing a little bow thing in most of my baby pictures and I’m 35. I think it’s kind of odd to put essentially a garter on a baby’s head but whatever I guess?

      1. I think that’s the thing that stood out as weird – the garter style headbands so you can have a bow even if your baby is hairless. I too wore small clip bows (on special occasions) but I was born with a full head of hair.

        1. I didn’t have hair til I was 2 and I think my mom was embarrassed about it (given that I still hear about it). I guess the garter was the next best thing!

    6. My 3 baby girls never had one because I was too lazy to match them and because they pulled them right off.

      People more stylish than I use them as accessories. Mine accessorized with drool bibs ;).

    7. I think maybe the massive bow is more regional? I don’t see many giant bows in NYC, although small ones aren’t so rare.

    8. I put a cloth turban wrap on my baby girl’s head in winter because it is cold. She’s new so I haven’t done any bows yet, as I’m more concerned with keeping her head warm. I will probably put a bow headband on her in the summer because I think it’s cute.

    9. My daughter was born with tons of hair, but I dunno… it’s just cute… and you get a tons as gifts… so why not? I tried to be gender neutral-ish for a while, but the clothes in that category (at least a few yrs ago) were super boring and super orange. FWIW, I also dressed my little girl in the most adorable robot & dinosaur outfits all found in the ‘boys section.’

    10. I don’t think this is new or a social media thing. I don’t put bows on my daughter but we were gifted approximately 400 (only slight exaggeration). My girl cousins and I were all subjected to bows as babies and we are all in our 30s.

    12. The giant garter bows on infants do seem new within the last 8 years or so? And something about them strikes me as…yeah, IG influencer-y. I don’t know how else to put it. And yes, of course, many of us wore appropriately sized bows as children. I was bald as a baby, but my mom just put me in All The Ruffles and there were no questions.

      FWIW, I have a really striking family photo of a set of beautiful teenage sisters in the early 1900s all wearing GINORMOUS white bows with their white linen dresses. When the bow’s the size of your teenager’s head, that’s when you know you’re committed to a look LOL.

    13. My baby had hair, so I never put a headband on her because it just made her hair all messy.

    14. Those bows have been around for a while, but the latest crop are a lot larger than the old ones.

      I have to chuckle about the bows sometimes–the baby is in a pink dress with ruffles and lace and people think it’s a boy because there isn’t a bow on the baby’s head?

    1. I thought the same thing when I saw it. It’s funny how this look is in fashion (? Is it?) when they could just have pulled the look from the assisted living facility where my mom used to live.

    2. That’s probably why I like it!
      – Signed,
      Worked at Talbots as a teenager

    3. I totally agree! The recent poster who was wondering about the frump factor with ankle pants — this is it. They need to be tapered to look modern.

      These — straight cut pants — should NOT be hemmed like ankle pants. These should be skimming just above the ground, hemmed for the heel height you want to wear them with.

    4. I’m really glad it wasn’t just me.

      These pants do look better in person, however. My mom (mid 50s) has a couple of pairs.

    5. It’s the shoes, they’re hideous. Styled differently it would look better, though the length of the pants isn’t quite right on the model. I have a pair and I do think they look better on me. I wonder if part of it is that I’m not as thin as the model, so the silhouette looks more streamlined and less frumpy?

      1. I agree with you.

        As someone with thick, muscular thighs at any size — IMO, ankle pants are impossibly hard to get right on legs that aren’t thin. I have exactly one pair of ankle pants that don’t make me look and feel frumpy. I’ve kind of given up on the silhouette, even though it’s the current style.

        1. Counterintuitively, the more muscles you have, the skinnier the pants have to be in order to look right. Really skinny pants show off the muscles. Less-skinny pants just cling to the widest parts of your leg and obscure the curves of the muscles.

          1. Aha, I think that’s why the one pair I own works OK and the rest have been a giant fail.

          2. Wow – that might just be revelatory advice. As someone with muscular bottom/thighs/calves but otherwise small and pretty thin, I never figured out ankle pants that don’t make me look frumpy. I’ll try on some skinny ones next. Is there a way to control the amount of booty factor with skinnier cuts? How do I make sure they don’t just look like leggings? I don’t really like long tops because they obscure my small frame.

  9. Please help me find a wireless bra. On the weekends and after work I like to wear what I call a fake bra – basically a bra that is just the shelf part of a tank with a built-in shelf (these are not enough support for me to wear out in the world, but are enough for using our shared laundry room or meeting the pizza delivery person). I have an ugly nude-for-me one, but I’d like up my game and find something that is both comfortable (i.e., could fall asleep on the couch in it) and not ugly or ideally a little s3xy. I’m a 36DDD.

    2. I really like Lively for this (same need – wear around the house for more coverage). I also appreciate that they hook in the back as I HAAATE bralets that you have to wrestle over your head.

      1. Soma makes something like this. It’s not really supportive, but does indeed function just like a shelf bra does. It’s mostly an extra layer but makes things just appropriate enough to take out the garbage or get the mail.

    3. Have you tried Madewell? I’ve gotten a few wireless bras there recently. They’re pretty, even if there’s not really enough support to wear outside. And they’re comfortable enough to wear to sleep.

    4. Check out the Wacoal options at M@cy’s. I own and like #852189 for this purpose; the soft cups are gentle but don’t scream “I gave up.” #852191 is s3xier but prone to a b00b falling out if you’re twisting an odd way, because it’s wider cut… buyer beware ;)

    6. May be too big for you and not supportive enough (but maybe not?), but I adore torrid’s braletts– they are basically lacy sports bras and are super comfortable.

    7. Look at the options in Target Gillian O’Malley line. I like all of their bras – caveat that I’m not well endowed.

    8. I’m not quite as big as you (36DD) but have started living in a couple of wireless bras from G*p. Nothing fancy but soft and easy to wear, even in “real” public if you’re so inclined. It’s the Breathe Wireless Bra and I sized down to a 36D without issue. HOWEVER, my b**bs are not real–I had breast cancer more than 10 years ago and have reconstructed and silicone b**bs now, so my support needs are lower than most ppl with similar sized natural b**bs.

      1. I’m a much smaller cup size but I second the Gap recommendation. I live in their bralettea.

    9. Cosabella curvy sweetie bralette. I also have one from Chantelle which is wireless and comes in standard cup/band sizes, fits wonderfully but it’s ugly. I think they make non-hideous ones, though.

      1. Ditto on the Cosabella options. The Evolution bra is also great, although not as “cute” as some of the other bralettes and only comes in black and nude.

    11. Check out the Bali comfort revolution line on amazon. 34DD and the M works well for me. Also really like Glamorise but they unfortunately start at 36 mostly so I don’t have a ton of real world experience.

    12. Decent Exposures, go for the custom fit and know they run a bit big. I have a 32F that is somewhat stretched out now, but works perfectly and my newest underwire bra is a 36H. They are pricey but do exactly what you describe with no annoying wires or too tight bands. I love that I got mine made with a front closure. I wear mine all the time for work from home and weekend days.

      For a more serious no underwire bra I have one from Anita that works well, but provides A LOT more support and coverage that’s equivalent or better than my underwire bras. I’ve had some sensitive skin issues that have made wearing underwires and lace edges a lot harder so I’ve spent quite a bit of time (and money) investigating the no underwire options

    13. I recommend looking at nursing bras: Hotmilk or Bravado. The nursing feature is pretty easy to ignore if you don’t need it.

    14. My favorite:
      Bali Double Support Spa Closure
      It’s unlined but the double support (literally two ply) hides nips well enough for home use. Super comfortable, three rows of hooks, and the magical back closure does not itch.

      https://www.amazon.com/Bali-Womens-Support-Closure-Wire-Free/dp/B000MX3PU2/ref=asc_df_B000MXB3IS/?tag=&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312673995032&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14676450805261817418&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9061288&hvtargid=pla-494790176795&ref=&adgrpid=59640385862&th=1&psc=1

    15. Cosabella Never Say Never, Check out the Lively website, Wacoal Lace Wire Free Bra, and Soma. The Wacoal wire free saved my life after gallbladder surgery, I couldn’t wear a real bra for weeks due to my incisions.

    16. Freya makes some nice bralettes, e.g. the Fancies or Daisy. Cleo has some as well.
      You can get them at bravissimo.com if you don’t have a bra store that sells UK brands near you.

  10. I was wondering if you all have any advice on how to network at a senior level event. I am a mid level associate and got invited to this event that will have lots of senior partners in attendance – looking at the list of attendants, I am probably going to be the most junior person there. On top of that, I am a non native speaker, went to undergrad in a foreign country and grew up working class. I am getting anxious I will have nothing in common with those senior people and will have nothing to add to the conversation. Help?

    1. You have your work in common! Read up on current events, know who you know in common.
      You’ll do great!

    2. Yes, do NOT be afraid to be the youngest woman there. The old guys will likely either 1) fawn all over you or
      2) ignore you
      3) be professional

      Since all are good options, don’t worry. There is always the chance of some guys getting forward, but you can just tell them you are MARRIED, and then they will select option #2. Go for it!

  11. I went to a finance conference this week.

    All people were in suits or dresses.

    Women’s bags were often a Neverfull/Goyard but lots of OG bags (incl mine) and some MZ Wallace.

    By Day 3 I was seeing Rothys points (no rounds) but still lots of skinny heels. I wore low block heels and my feet are still hurting.

  12. Would you date someone who was arrested for domestic violence 10 years ago? After 3 great dates, a guy I met thruogh mutual friends said he was arrested in 2009, and the woman dropped the charges. I googled him and confirmed his story. He owns his own company and has an otherwise stable life. My first reaction was hell no. But I felt we really connected, although it is hard to reconcile my view as a feminist to believe women/victims.

    2. What does he say? False accusations happen. If he denies it happened, I wouldn’t drop him immediately.
      You can default to believing victims and still not believe every victim in every situation when you have other evidence, and his version of events is a form of evidence. I never believed Jussie Smollett and I wouldn’t believe an accusation against my husband if it was just he said vs she said.

      1. The incidence of false accusations is incredibly rare. It’s much more likely that the “truth” – whatever that means – lies somewhere in the middle. I’m a domestic violence survivor and I’m 100% certain that my attacker would not describe the situation the same as I would. But I’m also willing to concede that, if there had been a neutral third party fly on the wall, their story would not be the same as mine either.

        When someone is violent toward you, there’s more to the story than just the facts of what happened. In that moment, you don’t know what they’re doing to do, and that’s part of what makes it so scary. Here’s this person who swore to love you forever and now they’re in a violent rage, punching walls, throwing things, screaming, wild eyes, and you don’t know if the next thing they punch is going to be you, if the next thing they throw will hit you, if he’s just going to hold your arm in place or if he’s going to twist his fist and break it, if he’s going to let go of your throat or keep squeezing.

        So, my story about what happened would include the terror that accompanies uncertainty. It would not be – they got in a fight, he got mad and punched a wall. It would not be – She made me mad and I had to blow off steam by punching a wall. It would be – he went crazy and I was scared for my life. That’s MY truth even if it isn’t “The Truth.”

        1. At this is exactly why she needs to ask this guy for his side of the story. Someone punching a wall in front of you isn’t domestic violence. It just isn’t. Words have meanings. I wouldn’t want to be in a relation with someone who got this angry often, but I would have no problem dating someone who’d once gotten angry enough he hit a wall. That’s very, very, VERY different than hitting a person.

          1. “Someone punching a wall in front of you isn’t domestic violence. It just isn’t. Words have meaning.”

            Dismissive, much? You’re also dead wrong.

            The formal definition of DV is a “pattern of behaviors used to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship,” and part of the wheel of power and control is “using intimidation,” including “smashing things,” and “making her afraid by looks, gestures, and actions.” Emotional abuse is as much DV as punching someone. How dare you dismiss this woman’s experience and suggest otherwise. How dare you.

            https://www.thehotline.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/08/Screen-Shot-2016-08-11-at-10.38.04-AM.png

          2. Well I used punching a wall as an example because I think there’s more gray, and it’s probably more common, than the incident that finally caused me to leave – when he picked me up by the throat and strangled me until I lost consciousness and then threw me across a room, where I hit my head on a table and bled quite a lot until I woke up hours later and got myself to the ER. But yeah it’s cool to tell me I’m not a domestic violence survivor. Or that his behavior up until he almost killed me wasn’t sufficiently violent for you to consider it domestic violence.

        2. OP here- I’m very sorry to read about that frightening experience. It is helpful, and I appreciate you sharing. I’m glad you got out of it. I did not ask questions because I was pretty shocked by what he said, and we ended the date with me saying I needed to think it through. I have never experienced DV personally, but my dad was abusive to my mom, and I was so glad when they divorced.

          I googled and found a story saying he was arrested in 2009, and a subsequent story (both police blotters) that charges were dropped at victim’s request.

          His side was that they dated a few months, it was toxic, he was arrested when a neighbor called due to a fight, and the relationship ended. They don’t have kids together and seem to have no contact. He brought it up and was forthcoming, which I do appreciate.

          I feel a connection, but my gut says this is still a dealbreaker.

          1. I think you need to trust your gut on this one. Not enough women do this – it’s kind of our nature to second guess our gut feeling and think that we’re just reading too much into things or being too cautious or it just couldn’t happen to us. Your head will overthink things, your heart will cause you to overlook thinks you shouldn’t, but your gut will never steer you wrong. Trust it.

        3. Nope. For this reason. My abuser would not describe what happened in the same way (and there were some times where he was blacked out that he doesn’t remember them happening at all). Most abusers don’t, unless they’ve received some intense batterer’s treatment (and still often not even then). I’d be out of there if a guy told me he’d been arrested for DV, even if not convicted.
          DV cases are difficult for women to “win.” A “dropped charge” could very well mean “I scared her into dropping them” or “I controlled the money in the relationship and she knew that if she continued to move forward she wouldn’t have any money” or “I owned a bunch of guns and she wasn’t sure I wouldn’t use them” or “I wouldn’t let her go to court” or “I super apologized so many times, it was just a misunderstanding, really, it was HER that was the crazy one, and she dropped them because I told her it just happened because I loved her too much!” Or “I barely bruised her, she just wanted to punish me” or “She just called the police because her b**ch of a mom told her to, she was totally out to get me” or “the neighbors called because we were getting into it, but she just needed a little bit of yelling when she was drunk to get in line. She fell, that’s how she got that bruise on her face.”

          You could look up the police report (and also search his name in the civil court records to see if she ever got a civil protection order against him), but I’d be out of there.

        4. My husband’s ex got mad at him after we got engaged (I wasn’t around when they separated or got divorced) and filed a restraining order against him. It got dismissed but he was worried he would lose his job. It is still findable in public records as an accusation against him. Before then she had hit him (and another woman who got mad at their child) and has hit him recently after visitation.

          His side matters.

      2. As a society, we make trade-offs. If someone calls about potential DV, do we want the police to almost automatically arrest the man and then determine the truth later? Or do we want officers to make an assessment on the spot, potentially with a weaker victim who is too scared to discuss everything with her abuser right there, who might be left alone with her that night?

        If it’s the former, you’re going to get a lot of thoroughly decent men who are arrested, with charges dropped shortly thereafter.

        1. “A lot”? Really? Because while there are some false claims there’s zero evidence there are “a lot” of them

          1. I am related to two of them, actually. The women eventually admitted in court that they made the whole thing up and the men never touched them.

            Due process matters.

        2. As someone who works with both domestic violence victims and offenders, in many of the incidents I’ve seen, it is neighbors who call the police. Not always, but very frequently. So, no one is speaking up claiming to be a victim for you to believe or disbelieve. Neighbors are making a noise complaint. Police label it domestic, and generally do arrest the male if it’s a hetero couple.

          In some of those incidents, physical violence happened. In other incidents, no physical violence or threat of violence happened.

          To the OP – it’s possible he’s being truthful. Maybe no physical violence happened. Maybe the woman views it the same way he does. The neighbors called the police and he was arrested but charges were dropped. I wouldn’t automatically rule out dating someone who affirmatively told me about an incident like this that happened 10 years ago, especially if he also seemed to understand his part in the toxic relationship and especially if he had grown up or made some changes to his life since then. All that being said, if your gut is telling you not to trust this particular guy, listen to your gut.

    4. I don’t know what I’d do, but in playing it out in my head, maybe I’d ask to talk to the woman. Hear her story. Then make the call.

      I certainly wouldn’t make a decision in his story alone.

      1. Please don’t do this. Do not make this poor woman revisit her trauma so you can decide whether you want to date her ex.

        1. Yes, please, god, don’t do this. It’s not a court case, she may very well be traumatized, and this is a terrible (terrible) idea. When I happened to see my ex in public (he didn’t even see me), I was anxious and shaky and had PTSD symptoms that had mostly gone away for about a week. I can’t imagine what I would feel like if a woman he’d been on a date with called me to get my opinion on whether he’s dating material, especially if I thought she might be sussing out whether I’m trustworthy or my story is real. Discussing it is not something I want to do with someone who I don’t feel supported by and who I know I can go to for help.

          Do not do this. Do NOT do this.

      2. OMG that is such a terrible idea. That poor woman doesn’t owe OP or any of her ex’s future dates ANYTHING.

        Reading this whole thread is very telling. You can instantly tell who has been in an abusive or toxic relationship or situation and who hasn’t.

    5. I really struggled with something like this in my last relationship. I actually posted about it here but I don’t remember the date. Essentially the guy told me he and his ex got into a knock down drag out fight – he says she hit him first and he hit her back. I don’t think I knew this at the time I posted here, but apparently this happened more than once. That made my decision for me. I can kinda sorta I suppose understand that if a woman hit you, you hit back. Especially if everyone has been drinking. But I would think that after that happens ONCE, you would be so horrified with the situation that you would immediately leave. The fact that he didn’t, that he (in my mind) allowed it to continue, essentially gave himself permission to be violent with her (even if it was only defensive/responsive). It shows horrible judgment at best and, at worst, that he thinks it’s ok to be violent toward women. So, in your shoes, I would continue to ask questions about the situation, the aftermath, whether they stayed together, and whether they have ongoing contact (like, if they have kids together).

      1. Not disagreeing with your overall point, but just wanted to point out that this “But I would think that after that happens ONCE, you would be so horrified with the situation that you would immediately leave” would never fly in this community if the genders were reversed

        1. Agreed. I think it’s extremely unlikely the woman was the one abusing him, but if she were are you seriously shaming him for not leaving??

          1. If he’s hitting her back? On multiple occasions? Yeah I don’t want to date him.

          2. Women can be abusers. And when they are they are comforted by knowing a guy may be shamed for even mentioning it and that people would believe her over him.

            Please get real about this. People in general can be truth tellers or liars. No gender has a lock on one vs the other.

          3. As someone who was abused by an older sister for 15 miserable years, thank you for saying that women can be abusers.

            She punched, kicked, and hit me for hours on end. She threatened to kill me innumerable times. She once tried to break my neck because I took a slighly different route home than she wanted me to. She tried to drown my friend. She said she was going to murder our baby sibling in the crib.

            Women can be abusers, too. Please do not discount me as a survivor of child abuse because my assailant has ovaries.

        2. I mean, I wasn’t trying to date her (though I date women too) so I wasn’t that focused on her actions/decision to stay. But yeah if a girl I was seeing told me that she got violent with her ex, and then she stayed with him, I would not want to continue to date her.

    7. I think I’d want to know what the charges were. Are there pictures of her battered from the initial police report? Or was it a he said/she said and she dropped it? While I’d generally take a hard line “no” on this, I could see why you’d want to do some investigating on your own given everything else you’ve described. False accusations do happen, but women also drop charges because the burden of proof feels too huge, they are embarrassed/ashamed, etc. I think I’d just want to know more before making a final decision.

    8. Honestly, I wouldn’t. It just seems like too big of a risk. Not all abusers are abusive from the start and they are often people that are respected and admired by others in their circles. I would always have that fear in my mind of, “when is this going to go bad?”

    9. It’s admirable that he told you, but I wouldn’t want to date somebody with a history of DV, even if the veracity of it is a gray area (maybe especially if it’s a gray area).

    10. To me it would be a yellow flag and I’d keep my eyes out for other problem behavior along those lines, but I’d proceed and use my own judgment.

      I don’t personally take a hard line on most things, but I see why someone would. If you don’t want to keep seeing the guy, you definitely don’t need to.

      1. I think this is where I fall. I’ve worked on some pro bono cases where a party’s behavior is so astounding that the only way to describe it is simply, “witches be cray.” Keep your eyes and ears open, but if you really felt that much of a connection, I’d pursue it.

    11. You won’t know until it’s too late if he will hit you too. Abusers never punch a woman in the face on the first date. He’ll win you over, seem very reasonable and caring, and in all likelihood, will start hitting you later. What possible reason could you have for being willing to take that chance? To borrow SA’s trademark, “when people show you who they are, believe them.”

    12. Short answer: hard no. Although, getting arrested is not the same as being convicted. I think that if as a society, we want the system to work, we do have to do things like make distinctions between arrests and convictions. Since he disclosed his arrest to you, obviously he knows that this is something that he has to deal with head on. You probably can ask more questions. If you ask more questions and don’t like the answers, drop him like a hot potato.

    13. I recently went out with someone who led me to deal with this question. After our date, I googled him and found that he had an arrest about 10 years ago for violating a protective order. I asked him about it, and he said it was for sending a text after the order had been filed, when he hadn’t known about it at the time. While he seemed like a nice guy, and it’s entirely possible that he was telling the truth, I decided I wasn’t comfortable with it because I had no way to verify what he said. I told him this, and he didn’t argue. Did not go out again or have any further contact.

      If there hadn’t been any other red flags, I might have put more thought into it. However, the context overall was telling me that this probably wasn’t something I wanted to pursue for several reasons.

    14. Does he have a therapist or has he gotten treatment? Is DV something an abuser can become aware of and stop? I really don’t know.
      The fact that he admits it is huge! Has he done self-exploration and work?
      I always like to think a person is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done. Is it a pattern, I guess, is the question? By the time you find out, is it too late for you?

    15. I would proceed very cautiously but would not outright say no. My ex was abusive towards me, but has a lovely relationship with his new wife. (We have mutual friends) I think it was a combination of our toxic personalities, plus an untreated mental illness and the fact that we were both young. He seems to have really grown and taken charge of treating his mental illness and developed better coping skills through therapy. So I think if this guy has done the work and has rehabilitated himself then give it a try.

      1. Respectfully, you are not in a position to comment on your abusive ex’s relationship with his new wife. Mutual friendships mean nothing. Many abusers are extremely popular and charismatic and their friends always come out with “I NEVER saw this coming, he is SUCH a nice guy, they had the most perfect relationship.”

        1. I’m the Anon at 12:15 pm above, and my own parents didn’t know how bad it was. They knew their were problems, but has no idea the scope and scale of it.

    16. No. It’s happened to me before and I would never in a million years date somebody who had done it.

    17. I possibly would. I would have the info in my back pocket to know to get out at the first hint of abuse. As an attorney, I would want to review the court filings and see what she alleged. I would be more apt to date this person if the accusation was part of a divorce because sadly, we do see a lot of overblown accusations in the divorce world. I want to caveat that this is the case in my state because we have different restraining order processes with different standards. One is a domestic violence one that requires “real” abuse. The other is a divorce restraining order that only requires perceived emotional harm. Not many states are this lenient on restraining orders. Because of our easy process (you literally check a box on your divorce petition/final decree and the judge asks you a few questions as to why you feel that way), it seems everybody feels abused/scared/wants a restraining order when in reality they can’t handle adult confrontations, want an excuse to have all communications go through the attorneys, don’t like that that they feel hurt that the relationship ended and want a leg up on getting the kids. These people usually don’t claim to be hit. Instead they claim that the partner drinks, gets angry, yells in a way that they “feel” is threatening. It is usually very subjective.

      For traditional restraining orders, I agree that false accusations are much lower. I’d be leery of one of those.

      Though, I’m also a believer that people change. There were guys I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole in college. Frat boys that treated women like crap that seem to have truly change their ways now that they are adults. If the guy said he screwed up and went to therapy and became a better person and didn’t ever do anything like that again, I’d give the guy a chance. A very careful and cautious chance.

      Lastly, I agree that men are victims of abuse too and getting out of relationship can be complicated by a lot of factors.

    18. I feel like if you continue to date him, you will never forget this and it will be in the back of your mind constantly. Personally, I wouldn’t be able to live with that.

    19. So, I will say that you should not date him, but for a slightly different reason. You mentioned that your father was abusive to your mother, and you may already have read that female children who grow up witnessing (or even just sharing a household with) abuse / abusers are MUCH more likely to gravitate towards abusers in romantic relationships later on. I don’t want to dismiss your analysis of the situation, but I did want to make you aware of this documented pattern as a different angle, and perhaps another piece of the puzzle.

      For myself, I absolutely would not date someone who had been accused of domestic violence unless the disclosure was immediately accompanied with a clear explanation that it was a lie. Not just a misunderstanding, or that something escalated – but an unambiguous, « Nothing remotely like that ever occurred, my ex had serious issues (mental health, etc) and made a false accusation to try to get back at me for leaving her, etc ». I still probably wouldn’t date this person, because having worked with victims, I’ve learnwd that the violence is usually insidious and only rears its head when you’re already in deep.

      1. This.

        I would be open to continue dating someone if they 1: proactively disclosed to me (which happened with OP), 2: they had done therapy or similar programming to address it (not clear if this has happened in OP’s situation), 3: I had not experienced any manipulative type behavior to date with the guy in question (not just no physical violence but no guilt tripping around spending time with others etc), 4: it was to the best of my belief a one time incident, 5: re-educate myself on warning signs of DV.

        But, there is zero history of DV in my family of origin. That makes it 100% different from someone who experience a home with DV as a child. It is really hard to unlearn patterns you see as a child and I would worry about someone who witnessed DV as a child being particularly vulnerable to DV in their own relationships.

    20. I wanna say no, but honestly, maybe, BUT cautiously. Very cautiously. First, I’d ask if he’s received any therapy to address why he did what he did, and I’d make it clear that at the first angry outburst, I’m gone. I’m not waiting for him to hurt me, I’m not waiting for a tantrum where he breaks things but leaves people alone, I’m not waiting for verbal abuse to get “bad enough to worry about,” I’m ending it at the first sign of an anger problem or manipulative, controlling behavior.

      1. That’s way easier said than done, though. Abusers groom you and it’s not they’re not likely to get very violent all at once.

    21. No.
      My guess is that he’s likely testing your reaction and setting you up to be manipulated later on, by telling you now.

  13. I’m in transactional big law and have been trying to streamline my work and productivity to try and take as much control as I can of my time. I’ve adopted various productivity/organisational tools that have helped me (turning off email notifications, responding to email in chunks, prioritising tasks) and I’m generally pretty organised, but I’d be keen to hear from others on their best time management/productivity tips specifically in the context of running (multiple) deals. A lot of the stuff out there is not suited to a job where fire drills are common and suddenly your day’s plan goes out of the window because of The Urgent Thing so I’m looking for something more specific to people in transactional jobs and similar where things move quickly and doing things like blocking time in your day to do X Y and Z is not really that practical.

    Also, we have time recording software but it’s awful and I always forget to switch my timers on and off (and the software isn’t such that it would be easy to e.g. have a timer always on top). I’m sure I miss out on billables this way (or grossly overestimate in some cases). Interested to hear how others manage their time recording.

    1. I just assumed that I’d have half my expected free time on any given day, and planned accordingly…

      On time recording, forget the timers. They’re too easy to forget which then makes them worse than useless. I would start a time entry first thing each day for each matter I expected to work on, and then just added to the narrative as I went.

    2. Also transactional, biglaw. Here’s what I find useful
      -I use one notebook for everything. I record the day on two big lines and then in the left column list the deal and time of whatever I’m taking notes on. Then I take notes on the right column and draw little boxes in the left hand column for to-do items that come out of the call/meeting. I do a box plus an arrow for things that someone else needs to do/to be delegated. I review my notes at the end of the day to make sure I didn’t forget anything
      -I bcc myself on important emails or emails that ask someone else to do something. Then I use the flag/follow up tool in outlook to set a reminder to check in on the thing I asked someone to do so I don’t delegate and forget
      -I have three different colored large post it notes I have on my desk at all times. One is for “later” projects, one is for “waiting on” items (where I delegated something or need someone to provide Info before I can complete) and one is for “today” items. I write a new today one at the end of every day for the next day.
      -screen your calls. If you have a deal that’s going crazy, don’t pick up the phone for anyone not on that deal. They will email/call back and you won’t break concentration.
      -assume all drafting will happen early morning or late night. There really isn’t a way around this in my experience
      -not really a productivity tip but I always prioritize doing everything that requires other people’s input first. So if I have three things to do after a call and two require other people to do things, I do those first. That way other people can get moving on stuff while I’m working on the third thing I can do myself.
      -to the extent you can, get someone junior to send out emails/requests/etc so they can field follow up questions and then come to you with the stuff they can’t answer. It will seriously cut down on the time you spend reacting.

    3. I use a (daily) large post-it note stuck to my desk. Which is an admittedly lousy system from an environmental standpoint, but which works for me.

    4. I use an old school timesheet notepad, and hand record start and stop times with cryptic task notes. My admin enters my time. It takes me very little time.

  14. Hopefully fun question – if you could travel like a rock star, what would be on your hotel rider?

    Mine would be

    1) soft tissue and not the sandpaper stuff
    2) a clothes steamer rather than an iron
    3) a mini fridge with Perrier water
    4) an XXL plush robe
    5) an aquis type hair towel

    Your turn!

    1. An HVAC system that doesn’t cycle on and off loudly in the night, waking me at every turn.

      And some capri blue candles.

      1. +1,000. I hate hotel HVAC units, they are the devil.

        And +1,000 more to OP’s idea of non-sandpapery tissue.

    2. I have always wanted to ability to bring my own mattress and pillows when I travel because I never find other beds comfortable.

    3. I can’t think of anything in the room, but I’d love it if every time I traveled I was met by a luxury car service and take me directly to the hotel. Car service is pretty common, but when we got it in Southeast Asia the car was super fancy (a Rolls Royce I think) and it was filled with water and snacks and had free wi-fi. It was awesome and I wish I could have that kind of experience everywhere. I can only afford it in SE Asia though.

    4. Ha! This is a fun question and I used to work with a client who had a hotel rider . . . they get really outrageous so that’s how I am answering – FULL diva mode.

      – Perrier, glass bottles only
      – Cruelty-free high end toiletries in brands I request
      – Vegan jerky in the brand I request
      – Premium towels in a brand I request
      – No paper products other than TP, and must be a tree-free TP
      – No plastic / plant based trash bags (my request for toiletries will be only glass bottled items)
      – High-end champagne
      – other assorted vegan snacks as selected by me
      – the best view in the hotel, top floor, away from any items that make noise (ice maker, elevator, etc.)
      – rooms on either side of me/near me empty

      I could go on, but that’s a good start to living like a diva, I think!

        1. Cadbury eggs? At least eight kinds of cheese. Really fine California cabernet. A massage therapist on call.

    5. Oooh I like this discussion!!
      – both sparkling and still water
      – labeled light switches
      – XL towels
      – a real hair dryer (non-crappy)
      – a real iron (non-crappy)
      – a steamer
      – a makeup mirror so I’m not leaning across the sink to do my makeup
      – pillows of varying softness

      1. Oh yes, some other comments made me realize I’m thinking too small. Instead of various small appliances, just give me an unpacking service who irons/steams my clothes and hangs them for me.

    6. – Wifi that just stays CONNECTED once you log in from your phone, rather than disconnecting every time your phone falls asleep and forcing you to go to the home page to enter your last name and room number every. single. time.
      – French press coffeemaker & freshly ground beans, along with creamer, fruit & healthy breakfast options stocked in the fridge. I HATE having to go out or wait for breakfast.
      – Unpacking and packing service
      – High quality collapsible umbrellas that are NOT branded with the hotel name (who wants to haul around a big stick umbrella all day? and advertise at the same time that you are a tourist??)
      – Champagne
      – Percale sheets that are NOT super high thread count (I hate the clammy clingy feeling of really high thread count)
      – Quiet HVAC

    7. Firmer pillows – even at hotels that claim to have different levels of firmness, the pillows are always too soft and I wake up with a stiff neck. Multi head showers. Random snacks waiting on a table for when I get back and feel snacky (fruit, popcorn, fancy chocolate). Dark makeup towels. Quality toilet paper. Giant towels. A dyson hair dryer since I am no where near the mental/financial place to spend that much on a hair dryer right now. .

    8. A room that is sparkling clean. I can’t tell you how many times I have checked into nice hotels and the carpet obviously hasn’t been vacuumed. Ick.

  15. I’d like to clean out my makeup drawer. Is there a place I can donate or recycle these things? Most of the makeup is barely used. It seems a shame to toss it but I’m pretty sure I can’t donate used makeup so I’m hoping to at least dispose of it in an environmentally friendly way (and commit to buying less “fun” makeup that I never wear…).

    1. I’d post it on free cycle. You wouldn’t be burdening a donation centre and it’d go to people who might want or need it.

    2. I took some makeup to work and put it in a bag labeled “free: sampled but not used, some never used”. I left it in the women’s restroom. It was gone by the end of the day.

      But my stuff truly was just sampled. I would not try to give away makeup I’d really used, like a used mascara or half a lipstick. That seems gross to me.

      1. +1, my co-worker’s wife works as an exec at Sephora…. and he brings in her goodies alllllllllllll the time for us and just puts in on the break table. I’m not a big makeup person, but it’s super fun to see what is in her stash.

    3. One of my friends had a makeup swap to address this situation. We all took makeup that we’d used gently (or not at all) and had a little spa day with champagne and swapped. It was a lot of fun!

      1. I’m in this category. If you wouldn’t use it or want it from someone else (see the above ‘makeup swap’ idea for exceptions – like maybe lotion?) then I would just chuck it.

    5. Project Beauty Share takes new and gently used cosmetics and makeup and donates them to shelters and transitional housing. If you search you should find the mailing address; they’re in Seattle.

    6. Do you have a young relative or BFF with a young relative who would love some makeup to play/practice with?

    7. The only ethical solution I can think of is offer it to your friends. Post a picture of it, put it on Facebook, ask if anyone wants any of it knowing it’s slightly used. Maybe offer it a second time a week later, and reach out to a few people who might want it but might not see it, but don’t spam people. Toss whatever isn’t claimed in two weeks.
      I know it stinks to just toss it in the trash, but sometimes that’s the best thing to do. Sadly not everything can be donated or recycled.

    8. No, this is unsanitary unless unused AND unopened. Please don’t donate used cosmetics unless to a friend or family member who knows that it was used/sampled and are okay with it. And definitely a huge no not ever if you’ve ever gotten a cold sore or applied the makeup while sick.

  16. I finished my PhD in a social science last year, and I feel like the dissertation writing process made my writing style very flat and dry. I’ve been writing different kinds of things my entire life, and have always had an easy and elegant way with language that now has all but vanished. I’ve picked up reading literature again and recreational writing again also. I’m working on turning my dissertation into a book, and I want it to be written in an engaging manner. What are some steps I can take to change my writing style?

    1. I am also a social sciences Ph.D. (almost 3 years out) and I struggle with this as well. I like to give (low stakes, in my department, very friendly) talks and then write immediately. I am in a more conversational mindset and it feels natural in a way that Writing A Paper does not.

    2. Writing prompts! Just dash off a few short snippets of fiction when you have a few spare minutes. Grind through, even if you hate what you come up with. Get the habit back, and the skill will follow.

    3. Daily writing or journaling, not related to your academic field. (I use 750words.com for this, but I think any kind of regular writing practice would help…)

    4. Try writing as if you were talking. Tell the story to someone over coffee. Academic writing can be a tough rut to get out of, but I’m guessing you still talk like a normal person:-)

    5. Can you think of books in your academic field that do what you want to do? If so, spend a few days rereading them. Try *not* to read bad prose during this period. Then go back to your writing and try to think of it as part of a conversation with the well-written books.

    6. I struggle with this, too. I have a degree in journalism, and the training changed my writing style pretty significantly. It’s a good thing for work, but I no longer enjoy writing for pleasure because it’s harder to express my thoughts creatively (and without my inner editor coming out).

    7. Kinda weird, but writing fanfic with or without use of prompts. It works for me, because I’m a scientist by trade, so writing fanfic forces me to write in a casual/conversational manner, and to try to figure out someone else (the characters).

      1. Something like this- my husband is an ip lawyer and asked to write for a small blog he followed in an unrelated area he is a hobbyist in (reviewing cartoons mostly). I helped him proofread the posts and he did this for a few yrs after we graduated… it was fun for him and helped him be a better writer… and fun for us to work on together too. :)

  17. I haven’t posted here in a while, but I’m de-lurking to ask about eyecream. I was gifted Elizabeth Arden Prevage and boy is it expensive to replace! I’m looking more to prevent wrinkles (already use sunscreen every day, but not quite this close to my eyes) and see what I can do to head off the permanent darkened undereye bags that my mother has developed. Suggestions for a quick cream that I apply daily or overnight? Budget is ideally <$25, but I would be willing to go higher for something that's amazing. Thank you!

    2. I started using The Ordinary caffeine solution under my eyes and it really makes a difference in the dark circles. So much so that I thought, hey, they are gone, I don’t need this anymore — and two weeks later I looked exhausted because they came back. It’s not as moisturizing — I use a separate eye cream — but the caffeine solution is really one of my holy grail products, and very wallet-friendly.

      1. I will look into that, thanks. I’ve seen caffeine touted on a lot of website and wasn’t sure what to make of it.

      2. I use that stuff too. It does seem to help a little.. I didn’t pack it when I went away for a week and I could tell the difference.

  18. For anyone still questioning whether it’s fair for transwomen to compete as women, a British rapper just identified as a woman for the day and broke the UK women’s records in weightlifting, squat lift, and bench press without training or trying hard. Glad he’s doing this to raise awareness since a lot of people will listen to a man (they’re certainly not listening to women).

      1. I don’t think it’s all one person….I didn’t weigh in on the thread the other day, but I’ve expressed here before that I have a problem with transwomen being considered women for some purposes – sports and STEM affirmative action being the big ones that come to mind. I don’t care what bathrooms anybody uses and think every place should move to unisex bathrooms with stalls, but I don’t believe transwomen are equivalent to ciswomen in every way.

        1. I actually have very nuanced views on this but don’t understand why there’s a post on this like every day rehashing the same things.

          1. There have been two posts in a week. That’s hardly every day (and if that’s the standard, then we should also crack down on questions about how to maximize online dating apps, whether Rothy’s are worth it, and tips for what to do in the gap between jobs). Feel free to scroll on by!

          2. Agreed! So much rehashing! I would consider dating, Rothys and gaps between jobs to much more in line with the content of this site and its readers, especially the latter two. And none of those are political.

          3. If you want a more political example, people have rehashed the “Bernie vs a moderate for the Dem candidate in 2020” topic multiple times in the last week. The majority of the discussions here have nothing to do with fashion or work.

          4. Anon at 11:46, you don’t find it sexist to limit the topics of conversation that are “appropriate” for professional women to clothes, dating, and self-care between jobs? What a ghastly prospect. This site has always had controversial posts, including posts about politics, social issues, and religion, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You are always welcome to skip posts that don’t interest you.

          5. Here’s the thing, this topic being rehashed never seems to raise new points or change anyone’s mind. On other repeat topics, there’s a much more robust conversation. Also, this topic unlike even political things like Bernie 2020 tends to result in a lot of bigoted commentary which people like me find obnoxious and exhausting.

          6. I respectfully disagree that this never brings up new points of view or interesting discussion. There was a great conversation here a few months ago (unfortunately I don’t have it bookmarked) about how you know you’re a woman, which included many different posts taking issue with the current wisdom that womanhood equals pink sparkles and giggles and nail polish. If you don’t find the posts interesting and you think they’re tiring, why do you waste the time reading and responding? No one is forcing you to.

          7. Anon at 11:13, this topic comes up A LOT around here, and often in the same kind of pot-stirring manner. It almost always devolves. I tire of it not because of repetition per se or that it’s “off topic” (not sure what our topic is..), it’s the fact that constant pot-stirring and agitating people (even on an emotive topic) degrades the quality of this community. I said this on the weird secret wedding threads a few weeks ago. People feel less inclined to post/posting is less pleasant when everyone is ready to pounce and “call out” someone for something. It’s like reddit or 4 chan or something.

          8. I agree with Anon at 12:45. I’m the initial Anon and this is why I don’t like this topic on this site.

    2. Right? Like how on earth does this remotely affect your life? And why would you value this particular issue ABOVE the actual life and death issues that affect the trans community? This is not a good look.

    3. That’s not how gender identity works. That’s how bigotry works. I don’t listen to bigots. Cheers.

    4. I don’t think anyone here cares as much as you about this topic. Maybe you’d have luck elsewhere?

        1. So, I’m not the OP, and haven’t posted on any of these threads. I’m all for trans rights, but do think that transwomen in female sports does raise a concern that merits consideration. I’m not sure I know what the right answer is, but I find the way that posters here are so dismissive of the topic to be really offensive. You are not changing minds and are just going to turn off people with that attitude.

          1. +1. “GTFO” is not a reasonable or clever response to a current social issue receiving a lot of media coverage. It just makes the poster look petty and small-minded and drives people away from rational debate.

          2. It’s not so much that people don’t think these topics are interesting or worth giving any critical thought to. It’s just that we are over the pot stirring. I know I am. This month it’s sports. We’ve also talked about STEM. A few months ago it was changing rooms. A few weeks before that it was bathrooms. It’s repetitive, it gets ugly, and eventually just devolves.

          4. +2. I believe the posters here (on all sides) have sincerely-held beliefs, and telling people GTFO isn’t constructive. I’d also add that I think sports/STEM/bathrooms/etc have different nuances when it comes to transwomen being considered women without qualification. I haven’t found the various trans discussions that repetitive, certainly not any more than the endless debates about who should be the Democratic nominee in 2020.

          5. As I’ve said before, I think that overall it degrades the quality of this community. People are nicer and more helpful in general when there’s not a ‘culture’ for lack of a better term of pot-stirring and pouncing on people.

            Of course we can scroll. I do. There’s just been marked. rise. of. snippy. rude. terse. comments. like. yours. lately. that seem intended primarily to bring other people down. Why is that so hard to understand? <– see how needlessly antagonistic this second paragraph makes my post?

          7. “Because I am married to a trans woman.”

            That doesn’t give you the right to shut down debate on women’s sports.

          8. Anon at 2:29, I am not cool with how you are talking to a long-term community member here. Maybe reserve your ire for other anons?

            It’s exceedingly rare that there are any threads on this site discussing sports at all. OP has an ax to grind.

          9. As an exclusively anonymous commentor, I really don’t want this to become a place where anons show up and target the people who have chosen to maintain a persistent identity.

          10. Ay anon @2:29, I was replying to someone urging me to “just. scroll. past.” when I see this come up. I don’t scroll by because my wife is a real, valid person and it is downright bizarre that an anon/anons keep bringing it up.

          11. I would normally agree but the OP here’s original post was very hostile/argumentative so I don’t think the response is unwarranted.

  19. Friends, I am scheduled for my first microneedling treatment later today. I am having second thoughts and am terrified. I don’t have to see anyone until Saturday so I can handle a bit of downtime, but how bad is it going to be??? Please help!

    1. Then don’t do it. It’s bogus science, and stupid, and a dumb Instagram fad. Cancel.

    2. I’ve had it done with a very new microneedling device, and there was virtually no downtime. I had it done in the evening and all redness was gone by the next morning. I was told the older versions cause at least a week of redness. So, I would ask the place where you are going what to expect based on their other clients. I have always found med spas to be upfront about redness, peeling and downtime because they want to manage expectations.

    3. I have had 6 sessions for acne scars and it exceeded my expectations. For some reason my first few sessions weren’t painful or really all that uncomfortable at all, but my last couple were a little uncomfortable when she went over the bony parts of my face (forehead, nose) But it wasn’t bad at all, and I no longer feel self conscious about my acne scars. Totally worth it. I was ready to see people 24 hours after.

  21. Did anyone watch working moms on netflix? I LOVED IT.
    Also recently enjoyed: Russian Dolls & The Umbrella Academy (which was a great watch w/ my husband).
    What else have you guys been watching?

    1. I have not yet watched season 3 of Working Moms but I loved the first two hard.
      I just finished season 2 of Dear White People which I also loved.
      And for anyone who is Irish or knows Irish people and culture well enough to get the jokes/the accents, Derry Girls is brilliant.

  22. I know this is sort of a petty gripe but I’m annoyed with a friend who’s being extra. Friend was a huge social media user at one time and then got frustrated and deleted all her accounts. Our friend group tends to send out event invites through facebook. When Friend wasn’t on social media, I/we would personally reach out to her to make sure she knew about these events. Also, if I know that someone hasn’t viewed my invite, I’ll text/call to follow up. I’m planning an outing in a few weeks. I can tell that Friend viewed the invite, but she hasn’t responded. A mutual friend recently told me that Friend isn’t going to accept the invite unless I personally reach out to her. But you saw the invite! You know about the event please stop making this hard! I’m going to see her this weekend so I’ll just mention it then but it might be with a bit of side eye.

    2. This would thoroughly annoy me. She’s looking for special attention for no good reason. Ugh.

    3. personally I hate those types of invites. You want me to come but can’t be bothered sending everyone a personal invite, whether that’s by mail or email or text? PaperlessPost makes this so easy.

      But that aside, this is what you do and there’s no reason why you need to change it for her. You’re a grownup. If you have friend drama in your life you chose it.

    4. Maybe that means she just doesn’t want to go? That was my husband’s (not emotionally invested) response to my brother’s bachelor party (my brother is way younger and hip and wants to go to South America for a week, and while we love him a lot, we have 2 tiny kids and nooope!). He just figured the invite was to be nice & keep him in the loop & my brother assumes he won’t go unless he reaches out specifically (I mean, not how I’d deal with it, but I also think it’s fine). Otherwise this girl is being extra, and I wouldn’t reach out unless you really, really, really do want her to be there. If you need FIRM numbers because people are paying for things- you could also reach out a few days before you deadline and say ‘hey, just checking in to make sure that everyone who wants to come has RSVP’d, can’t change reservations after 3 days from now, so please change your response if needed by ____.’ My friends can be *a little flaky* at times, so I do this for my own sanity, and so I don’t get stuck with the bill.

    6. This is a great time to text.
      U ok? You’re invited to upcoming event! Did you see the email?

      But if you choose not to do that, that’s ok, too.

    7. You are both being petty. You should send out invitations via e-mail or text message, not on social media. Friend should respond yes or no without any additional individual outreach. Neither one of you should be communicating with one another through third parties.

      2. Why is social media not an acceptable format for invites? I would feel differently if the friend wasn’t on facebook. But I don’t see how a facebook invite is different from a mass email or group text. What is I’m missing?

        1. Yeah I mean personally I hate mass texts. I do not need to get surprised with my phone blowing up in the middle of the day. Even a mass email gets unwieldy. I like fb because it creates one place where people can comment about things that might affect the group – i.e., I can make it for part of the event but not all is that ok?, I’ll bring pasta salad, is it ok if I bring my sister, etc. It’s much easier to see all this information in one spot, organized by topic, and not have to scroll through a long email thread. I don’t know anyone who uses paperless post.

          2. OP just an fyi- you can turn off notifications on group texts. I have a lot of friends ‘muted’ because I change time zones a lot and can’t expect my friends to keep track of where I’m at… but also don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to bing bings.

        3. Because FB has a notorious reputation for being generic event blasts. There are sooo many invites that seem personal and you look at the guest list and it has 80 to 100+ invitees. Even worse someone spams their whole friend list or something for an MLM event. If I get a FB invite I assume it’s an event that isn’t serious and inviter doesn’t care if I’m there or not. Email, text, or paperless post requires creating an event and individually typing my name/email in and a specific intent to invite so it gets more attention. There is a good chance friend clicked on the message to open but didn’t review it in any detail, especially if she barely uses social media.

          Be an adult and send social invites via adult channels – post, call, or email (even a text invite is iffy if drafted like a generic event blast).

    8. If you invite someone via Facebook and they see the invite but don’t respond, don’t assume they’re ignoring you on purpose, there are a bunch of reasons why this might happen. If you really want someone there, you reach out to them directly and say so. Yes, it’s silly that someone will only go if you do this, and will hold out for a more personal invite, but it’s also silly to refuse to do it because you “shouldn’t have to.” Do you want her there, or not?

      1. I’m not refusing to do it? Not sure where you’re getting that? I said in the OP that I’ll talk to her in person when I see her this weekend.

    9. I don’t think it’s established good manners to conclude anything from whether Facebook tells you that someone has viewed a post or not. My instinct is that it’s a bad idea to do anything with that information or even to assume it’s accurate.

  23. Paging in-house ladies! (ideally Sr. Counsel or GC level)
    How well do you expect to understand the business and product technology (at implications of technical decisions level, no implementation details or even architecture level) of your employer and how do technical and product teams interact with you?
    Do they tell you what should go into agreements, or do you ask questions and use the responses to draft agreements.
    Do technical teams review your work?
    What areas do you manage external counsel in vs areas that technical/product teams directly manage outside counsel?

    I’m struggling with working with our GC because they ask no questions, and act pretty much as a pass-through between outside counsel for some areas (i manage outside counsel directly in some areas) and expect me to review their work. AND I AM NOT A LAWYER

    1. To use a software license example — as counsel, I would have a form agreement that includes basic deal concepts like reps, warranties, and infringement indemnity. I would know which lines of business are going to use it, and given their model, to ask the right questions about how to draft the license grant, who the permitted users are, etc. I would ask some questions about implications to the extent I can (like if I’m aware of an exclusive relationship we have with another vendor and this seems like it’s getting close to that, I’ll flag it) but for the most part the business client initiating the transaction needs to first do their internal diligence that it aligns with overall strategy and existing deals. If there are regulatory concerns based upon the business client’s description of how a product is going to be used, I’ll flag and help manage those as well.

      Software example again, I would rely on my business client and their counterparts at the software vendor to actually draft (i.e., not just describe to the lawyers to write up) an Order type document with the exact product to be licensed, upgrade/support scheme, whether there is an implementation period required with associated milestones/timing, service levels, pricing, term/renewal, and the like.

      If a transaction is complicated enough to use outside counsel, we will have joint meetings with them, in-house counsel, and in-house business clients so everyone is on the same page. But some companies, particularly those with a small in-house legal team that relies more extensively on outside counsel, may operate differently or nothing would ever get done!

    2. I have some familiarity with the business but I expect the business side to know that better than me and provide input into whether what I draft meets their technical needs. My people are not shy about doing this!

      1. Agree. My biggest pet peeve is when the (many, many, many) business units I support toss some deal points at me and expect me to spit out a doc that reflects their unique business needs and budget. The business side should know what it needs and why. The vendor came back asking to limit their warranties from 3 years to 1 year? What did you think you were buying? How long of a warranty period do you need?

    3. I am a lawyer in a non-lawyer role, but deal directly w/ our GC/senior counsel for sign offs on regulatory filings- the assumption is that if she reviewed and ok’d my stuff- then it has legal’s sign of approval and is ready to go out (and any legal issues are on her shoulders). She doesn’t need to sign off on everything- but we do have a set list of things she does need to review- sometimes this requires I set up a call to get this done and walk her through the docs/issues I’m concerned about. I do my best, confirm info w/ SMEs, and she is also very knowledgeable and no-nonsense… however, I have been interviewed for similar gc roles and often think that companies try to save a few bucks hire people w/ no experience… so could totally see what is happening to you happening, and that would really concern me that she could try to scapegoat something on you if things go wrong. Do NOT accept a lead sign off role w/ legal implications if you are not ready for potential consequences (this doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t sign off on some things, but know what the differences are).

    4. I’m in tech, no senior counsel yet but I review tech-heavy agreements. I definitely try to understand the basics and am constantly learning, but honestly there is no way I can get into all the details and that’s not my job. So when I review an agreement, I often send it back to the tech or finance guys with a “please review section XYZ specifically and make sure it matches what you had in mind”. This generally works well. If it’s complicated or very important, they might come and discuss it with me so that we can combine expertise and make sure we’re doing the right thing.
      If we are using outside counsel, I spend a lot time explaining what we do to them, so I need to know enough to give a basic picture and then know what to ask and who to call for specifics.

  24. Could anyone recommend some good casual button-down shirts? Something along the lines of a chambray shirt (which I already have) or plaid shirt. I’ve got my eye on an LL Bean scotch plaid shirt but would love some other options as well, and maybe some for warmer weather. I want to up my casual weekend wear vibes but am struggling with this!

  25. I might post this again later for more replies, but is anyone familiar with what industries are in Savannah, GA? I’m looking at moving there for family reasons and I can’t figure out what core industries are there besides tourism. I make $75k in the financial industry in another state and would like to stay in the same salary range but I don’t need to (or even necessarily want to) stay in the financial industry. I’m open to exploring other things.

    1. Biggest employers are healthcare (two major large hospital systems), manufacturing (JCB and Gulfstream among others), and shipping/logistics since the port is one of the busiest on the east coast. Higher education is also a player since there are several colleges here including SCAD, a Georgia Southern campus, Savannah State, South Univ and a couple of other tech/training schools

    2. My in-laws were public aid lawyers there for about 10 yrs until they moved back north.

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