Image courtesy of The Pictures Blog of Mr. MaLao's.

“Oh no, I dropped my WatCard under your bus!” I said (loudly, but hopefully not to the point of shouting) to the bus driver as I leaned down in my scoop-neck blouse and high-waisted tulip skirt — which become relevant — to better analyze the damage.

“It’s right by the tire; I think I can get it,” I announced, placing my ice cream cup and purse on the ground to reach under the bus while those on board possibly wondered how one girl could take this long to board a bus.

Success! I reached my WatCard without either it or my hand getting crushed under the tire, and after retrieving both my purse and my raspberry cheesecake mini waffle bowl, climbed aboard, apologizing profusely for my inanity.

“You’ll just have to give me a spoonful of that ice cream,” responded the graying bus driver.

“Oh! Heheh… I—”

“Just kidding,” he said as I grabbed a seat and hoped to die.

And this kind of thing happens to me, every so often. Not the klutzy idiocy thing, I mean — although that would be true, too — but the lascivious comment thing.

There’s another, older bus driver who greets me with either, “Good to see ya, sweetheart,” or just, “Good morning sweetheart,” every time I board his bus, without fail. I’d never done anything to, for, or around him that merited my being dubbed sweet before he started calling me this. Granted, I generally smile and say a kind “Hello, how are you,” to the driver of any bus I board, but I’ve never thought that to be out of the ordinary. I’ve contemplated how he’d react if I ever chose to respond with, “Good to see ya too, ya lovable old lech.”

Leading me to wonder: would this kind of thing happen if I was wearing a turtleneck and pants?

I sometimes ponder whether I’d be greeted with the same smirking grins by many of the older men I encounter, were I to be wearing a dowdier shirt or a longer skirt. Obviously dressing a certain way will attract a certain type of attention, but does dressing well without being overtly provocative also demand this sort of attention? Would people think I was smarter if my clothing looked less sharp? Should I not wear pink if I want an ‘A’ on a presentation? All signs don’t necessarily point to yes, but most often, a disconcerting number of them do.

I don’t want my intelligence and capabilities to be underestimated by mere virtue of my proclivity for wearing dresses. Dresses that are occasionally pink and may feature a few ruffles or frills. Or a low-cut neckline, or a high-cut hemline (but never both at the same time).

But I also don’t want to have to dress like a stereotypically dowdy female professor, à la Emma Thompson in Wit, in order to be taken as seriously.

Ay, and therein lies the rub. But what is the solution? To dress to impress, yes, but whom? Impress the fashion cognoscenti, or the literati?

It seems that while one woman may, one dress can rarely do both.