Taking a Compliment

Taking a compliment. Not easy, right? 

When someone compliments us - hair, clothes, professional success, how well-behaved our children or our pets are, our home, etc. - our first instinct is not to accept, but to deflect. 

Here are some examples of things that I have said recently: 

Compliment: "Mary Catherine, your outfit is so cute!" 
Me: "Well I'm trying to distract from the fact that I've eaten like I'm out on bail this weekend, so this tunic is to mask the 1,000 pounds of pasta in my belly right now." 

Compliment: "This breakfast is delicious - thank you so much!" 
Me: "Somehow I've made these biscuits 1,000 times, and they still didn't turn out quite right. Ugh. But thank you!" 

Compliment: "I love the way you did your hair today. It looks really pretty!" 
Me: "Actually I look like a garden troll - I haven't washed my hair for three days and it basically is about to leave my head in protest." 

So, yeah. I'm certainly not talking about this because I've mastered the art of taking a compliment. 

But it's something I've become acutely aware of lately - it seems women in particular simply cannot take compliments. We have such a hard time accepting that someone else is giving us praise. Why?? I think it's two major reasons: 

1. We don't accept compliments because we don't want other people to think we're stuck up. 

This is basically the "So you agree - you think you're really pretty?" scene from Mean Girls, realized. If someone gives you a compliment, and you don't immediately disagree or say something mean about yourself, that must mean you AGREE with the compliment. And THAT must mean you're stuck up and horrible, because the idea that you're allowed to feel good about yourself is just plain unacceptable. 

2. We genuinely don't agree with the compliment or are uncomfortable getting praised. 

I have lots of friends who, when complimented (especially in front of a group), turn into shrinking violets. They physically actually make themselves smaller and try to direct attention anywhere but them. These are my friends who, for whatever reason, can't understand why they're being positively reinforced by anyone about anything. They don't believe they're worthy of these sorts of kind words, so they have a physiological reaction to being singled out. They don't see it in themselves and they CERTAINLY don't want to hear it from others. 

Listen, here's the thing. 

If someone is giving you a compliment about ANYTHING - however small - it's because that person really, genuinely had that thought and wanted to share it with you. It's a verbal affirmation with the singular intention of making you feel good about yourself. When we deflect or disagree with compliments, we're not really achieving the goal we think we are. Instead of looking humble, funny, or down-to-earth, we end up looking rude, ungrateful, and insecure. The person who gave us the compliment is now having to laugh at our joke meant to minimize what they meant to be kind.

Think about it - if you were at a restaurant with a group of people and someone said, "My meal was GREAT. Every bite was perfect," you'd never respond with, "Really?? Because I thought your food looked like garbage." Of course not! You'd never be rude enough to say something that contradicted that person's experience or insulted their opinion. And you know what a compliment directed at you is? That person's experience and their opinion. 

I am a person who loves to compliment other people, regardless of how well I know them (I'm the girl who will cross a room to tell a stranger that I love her shoes or bag or hair or anything else), and yet I still have to coach myself through simply saying, "Thank you so much!" when someone compliments me. Whazzup with that?? 

So here's my challenge for everyone, but particularly the ladies who read this blog: all week long, I want us (me included) to practice accepting compliments WITHOUT the little dog and pony show that goes along with it. Here are some responses you could use: 

"Thank you so much!" 
"Oh wow - I wasn't feeling great, and you just made my day!" 
"That is so kind of you to say. I really appreciate that." 
" You know what? I left the house feeling really insecure about _________, and you just made me feel great!" 
"You are always so sweet. Thanks for saying that!" 
And if you're anxious about letting the "Thank you," hang in there air, then throw a compliment right back! 

If your problem is that you're worried people will think you're a big snob, here's a secret: they won't. People are way too wrapped up in themselves to worry thinking that much about your response to a compliment -- promise. 

If your problem is that you don't think you deserve the attention, well Lean In, sister, 'cause I got news: YOU DO. 

It may be uncomfortable, and it may not feel natural, but on our path to being fully realized, gracious, radiant women, one of the things we have to learn to do is just say, "Thank you." 

Gauntlet: thrown! 

(And in the meantime, please enjoy this hysterical - but also NSFW and partially pretty foul - video from Inside Amy Schumer about how women just can't take a compliment.) 

Do It Yourself In One Million "Easy" Steps

Doing it yourself is so easy! It only takes one million extremely complicated steps. 

1. Look at your dining room. Gaze in ambivalence at your four non-matching, VERY worn out chairs.
2. Realize that you're a 27-year-old grown woman who's been married for nearly 2 years and it's time to get matching dining room chairs. 
3. Meet a friend and go to an estate sale. 
4. Try not to think about the fact that all this furniture used to belong to someone who died recently. 
5. Do not look at the mug that says "World's Best Grandpa," and do NOT think about how sad it is that that mug is on the shelf. 
6. Stumble upon a set of chairs that have good bones.

7. Ask your friend what she thinks. 
8. Text your mom to get her opinion.
9. Text your husband to get HIS opinion. 
10. Congratulate yourself on being awesome at choosing husbands when his response is, "Get what you want! You're the boss!" 
11. Note with glee that all four chairs are only $80. 
12. Buy chairs. 
13. Go to brunch and celebrate. 
13. Come back the next day with husband and dog to pick up said chairs. 
14. Make sure the chairs, which are not high quality, scratch the paint off your husband's Jeep (his most prized possession). It's important to add a little tension to the scenario, because otherwise it's just TOO EASY! 
15. Find a tutorial online that started with similar chairs to yours and ended up looking like you want them.

16. Compile a list of supplies and ask your husband to drive you to Lowe's. 
17. Convince your husband that you promise not to act up in Lowe's this time - you won't hide behind the palettes or use dowels as swords or climb the ladders and sing his name loudly when you're at the top.
18. Keep your promise (mostly). 
19. Locate all your supplies, then drive to the fabric store. 
20. Avoid the cute boy scouts on the way in, because they want to sell you things you don't need and you're powerless against a cute, chubby little boy scout. 
21. Laugh to yourself as you pass a family where the smallest boy is suggesting a Finding Nemo print for his mom's new couch.
22. Gasp in horror at how expensive all the foam you need to re-cover the cushions and back of the chairs is going to be. 
23. Ignore that the brooding teenage guy checking you out hasn't showered today (or anytime this year) and smile politely as he tells you that you have to get your foam pre-cut in order to pay for it. 
24. Watch as your husband returns the foam to where it belongs and decides that the foam part can wait until another day.
25. Arrive home. Pack a lunch for your husband so he can go fly fishing.
26. Sit on your front porch, drink a beer, and seriously consider setting the chairs on fire. 
27. Locate sandpaper. Start sanding the paint away. Sand until it hurts. Sand until you don't have fingerprints left.
28. Remember that your friend Wes gave your husband a palm sander as a wedding gift. 
29. Go to your basement. Get bitten by a rat (or probably just an ant, but it felt like a rat). Find the sander. 
30. Google "How do you use a palm sander?" and watch the tutorial. 
31. Turn the sander on. Promptly sand a chunk off of one of the chair legs. And make sure it's a front leg, too - not a back leg where no one will notice. 
32. Call your father in law to make him talk you through sanding stuff. 
33. Decide you can TOTALLY DO THIS and you will not be defeated be an MFing power tool. 
34. Sand two chairs completely. 
35. Try to remove the seat cushions from the chair frame with a screwdriver. Fail. Strip the screws to make sure they're REALLY hard to get out. 
36. Remember that your husband has a drill somewhere. Find it. Turn it on. 
37. Shove one of the drill bits into the drill head thing and start stabbing at the screw to see if that's how it works. 
38. Google "How the hell do you use an electric drill??????" 
39. Figure it out and remove all but two of the screws. 
40. Take a selfie to send to your father in law who can't believe you're doing this project. 

41. Find the varnish and a sponge paintbrush.
42. Having not learned anything from the "start with the back legs" mistake of just a few minutes ago, start by painting the front legs. Badly. 
43. Hope your neighbors aren't weirded out that you're binge watching Sex and the City while doing this. Try to turn the volume down anytime Samantha is on screen. Slime your computer with varnish. 
44. Since you've sunk 4 hours into this project, welcome your husband back home from his fishing trip. 
45. Watch in delight as he successfully removes the stripped screws by using a rubber band as leverage. 

46. Apologize to your EXTREMELY bored dog, who won't even look at you because of how neglected he's been all day. 

47. Congratulate yourself on having not permanently damaged yourself, the dog, or the chairs. 
48. Congratulate yourself on having learned how to use power tools all on your own. 
49. Leave the chairs on the porch, untouched, for the rest of the weekend. 
50. Look at your life. Look at your choices. Hope that the chairs get eaten by bears. 

Sipping LEMONADE.

...y'all. 

WHO CHEATS ON BEYONCE?!

Sorry. Getting ahead of myself. 

If you haven't been on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter or looked at iTunes or Buzzfeed or anything else this morning, let me share with you: 

Saturday night, Beyonce released a visual album - beautiful, film-quality music videos accompanying each new song on her record - on HBO. Immediately after she released the visual album, she released the audio album, LEMONADE, to Tidal, her husband (Jay Z)'s music streaming service. 

In an interesting twist, though, she'll also be releasing it on iTunes.  This is worth noting for a couple of reasons: 1. Because the purpose of Tidal was to create a superior streaming service to iTunes for "real" artists, so releasing it on both platforms is kind of defeating the purpose, but 2. Because Tidal was founded by Jay Z, who cheated on her. 

And that's what this new project is all about.

In LEMONADE, titled because of Jay Z's grandmother's quote ("I was served lemons, but I made lemonade,"), Beyonce takes us on a journey from discovering her husband's infidelity (as word markers flash across the screen: "Denial," "Anger," Accountability," "Apathy") to her decision to try and move forward in her marriage ("Reformation," "Forgiveness," "Hope"). Watching the visual album straight through takes a little under an hour (57 minutes) and feels like watching a movie - one that's almost too emotionally honest to look at directly. 

Everything about this project is raw. It's hard to watch. It's hard to listen to. At one point, through her beautiful singing, you can hear the tears in her voice as she nearly screams:

"Dishes smashed on the counter / from our last encounter / pictures snatched out the frame / bitch, I scratched out your name and your face / what is it about you that I can't erase?/ Every promise don't work out that way." 

But the reason this album is so unique is that for all the times you want to turn away from the unfiltered intensity, you are compelled to keep watching because of the absolutely stunning aesthetics of each shot.

Beyonce's new project is one of the most visually beautiful things I've seen in a long time. Every close-up, every costuming choice, every set, every woman who appears in it - it's classically beautiful one second and hauntingly sad the next. No matter what's going on on screen, you can't stop watching -- especially when you figure out that her outfits in LEMONADE correspond with outfits she's worn in previous music videos with her husband. 

SYMBOLISM, PEOPLE. It's everywhere. You really have to watch this four or five times through to get it all.

From a musical standpoint, this album is a real departure from her self-titled last album. It's musically more diverse, with LEMONADE featuring tracks that sound like old-school Southern rock and roll -- there's even a nod to country music. A couple of ballads will leave you gut-punched, and her new song "Sorry," will come to be known as the fight song for scorned women everywhere. 

Promise. 

Toward the end of this gorgeous project, there's a song called "Sandcastles." The title word for the that flashes before the track - the word that marks where Beyonce's heart is at this point in the story - is "Forgiveness."  And the video for this one features Jay Z and Beyonce, together, face to face, while sometimes cutting to b-roll of their wedding day, Beyonce's parents' wedding day, Jay and Blue Ivy playing together - it looks like all is mended. 

Though the visual album ends with a reconciliation, (I mean, Jay didn't film this video for his wife's new album unaware that it was entirely about him cheating, so, ya gotta figure they've worked through it), it's gonna take a little longer than 57 minutes for us all to process the fact that he cheated.

Because...WHO CHEATS ON BEYONCE? 

If you haven't watched the visual album (available on HBO), here are some teaser shots for you. Meanwhile, you can read reviews of the album here, here, and read the beautiful (and extremely powerful) spoken word poetry preceding each song here. 

All in all, it is a powerhouse of a project and one of the most humanizing things an international superstar, an untouchable celebrity, could have released. I can't wait to talk about it with any and all of you guys. 

A Letter to Brides.

Dear beautiful bride, 

RIGHT?! It happened! You're engaged! Are you SO FREAKIN' EXCITED!? I know. It's the best. It really is. 

In about two weeks, people are going to start asking you lots of questions. What kind of wedding do you want? Big? Small? What time of year? How many bridesmaids? What sort of dress do you have in mind? Will the wedding be in your hometown or your fiancé's? Or neither? 

Your head might feel like it's going to pop right off your body and spiral into space. 

Been there. 

I've got five pieces of advice for you - both practical and philosophical - that I believe, if taken to heart, will make things a whole lot better. 

1. Be kind to your mind. 

At first, the decisions you get to make will be thrilling. Because it is thrilling! You're getting married!

After the first hundred of them, you'll start to notice yourself becoming a bit more sluggish and fuzzy-headed. This is a real thing called decision fatigue. The more decisions you make, the harder decisions become. Band or DJ? Indoors or out? Pink bridesmaids' dresses or grey? 

Choose a time of day (the best is in the morning, when your mind is fresh and well-rested) that you'll spend a set amount of time planning. I'd recommend an hour and a half or so a day. Set up a call with your planner (or, if you're doing it yourself, really discipline yourself to stick to the amount of time you've chosen). After an hour of decision-making ("Band! Indoors! Grey!"), try to make as few choices regarding your wedding as possible. This will save you (and everyone who has to deal with you) a lot of brain cells, headaches, and tears. I promise. 

2. Pick people who make you happy.

You've obviously already followed this advice - look at your fiancé! Now, all you have to do is keep making that choice. 

The guest list may be the most stressful part of any wedding. Two families, with all their relatives, close friends, and distant acquaintances, trying to compile a reasonable list of who's invited to this shindig. Let me spoil something for you: there will be people that you forget to invite. They will just slip your mind, until you run into them in person one day and your stomach sinks. 

It's not the end of the world. They'll forgive you. 

As for the ones who you do remember to invite, here's my advice: only invite people who, when you see them in the aisles of the congregation, would make you (or your spouse) light up with joy. Otherwise? AXED. 

That distant friend of someone's family member who once gave you a cookie on your birthday? You don't have to invite them. That fraternity brother who always kind of bugged you? Not on the list. 

Of course, if someone isn't invited, that doesn't mean they bug you or that you don't care for them. It just means that a guest list can only be so large. 

This day is about filling a space with l-o-v-e. That means if you were to run into a person at your reception who makes you think, "Oof. Avoiding THAT guy," then "that guy?" He ain't comin'. It's not because you're hateful, or cutthroat. It's because this is a time when obligations or forced interactions don't have to take place. It's because you should fill a room with the people on Earth who make you ONLY feel happiness. That's your prerogative. 

3. Delegate your responsibilities. 

When I got married, my mom and I did all the planning, calling, and deciding. We chose not to hire a wedding planner, because my mom happens to love doing all of the things surrounding a wedding (flowers, choosing a paper weight and calligraphy style for invitations, etc.). But she is also a freak of nature (in the best way), and I recognize that. 

The very first thing you should to to ensure that you don't end up with 30 tasks to complete 2 weeks before you get married is download a timeline, like this one, that helps you know how far out you should be booking/thinking about certain things.  

If you're planning by yourself? Enlist your bridesmaids to help complete certain tasks, like researching florists or venues in the area. And hire a "day-of" planner to take the wheel on your wedding day, so that all you have on your plate is to enjoy getting married. A day-of planner is a very inexpensive way to buy peace of mind. 

Planning with a family member or close friend? Make sure the division of responsibility is clear. You're handling invitations, the gown alterations, and booking spaces, while the other person deals with flowers, contact with the officiant, and making sure everyone gets paid. 

Working with a professional planner? Make your vision clear from the start - give them your Pinterest board, your scrapbook, your box of wedding ideas. Check in with them periodically. Be proactive. They may be running the show, but it's your wedding - input from you is crucial. 

It sounds un-romantic and stiff, but schedules and delegation are big. When you look back at this season of your life, it will undoubtedly have been a little frazzled, but you want to remember it as a happy time! Not as a time when you wanted to pull all the hairs from your head, one by one. 

4. Prioritize. 

Weddings cost money. Boy, do they ever. Your eyeballs may fall out and roll across the table when you start to realize just how much they can cost. 

Because things are so expensive, it's major to choose what's most important to you. Unless you're Kim Kardashian, you can't have the most expensive venue, AND the most expensive band, AND a $15,000 wedding dress, AND a 50-tiered cake, AND an open bar, AND a great photographer. There are choices to be made.

For Jordan and me, our priorities were: photographer, wedding gown, bar, and band. We wanted to have beautiful pictures of our day, for me to have a dress that made me feel great, for the bar to be full and open, and for there to be a great band that made it a real party. And I think (I hope!) we achieved all those goals. 

But that also meant that certain things were less of a priority. And that's okay! Not everything was as important as those top four. 

No matter what your budget looks like, your wedding can be exactly what you have in mind. It's a matter of deciding what things you want to spend your hard-earned money on. There has literally never been a better time than now for a DIY-wedding, given that places like Etsy exist. Some of the most touching and fun weddings I've ever been to were also done on a lower budget. 

Because you know what really makes a wedding? YOU. And your spouse. Which brings me to piece of advice #5 - the most important: 

5. At the end of the day, you're going to be married. 

All that other stuff I said before? It's important, sure. It's nice to not want to fling yourself from a building while planning. It's nice to have a concept of who's in charge of what. 

But the most important thing is you and the person you've chosen. Remember your first date? Remember how you had no idea that this was who you'd end up with, and now you're going to MARRY them?

Remember how, when you were a little girl, you dreamed about your wedding? You played house? You thought about what your grown-up life would look like? 

Here it is, sister. It's him. It's her. It's here. 

The reason to work hard in the planning process is not to throw a great party, or to have the "best" wedding, or the fanciest, or any of that. It's so that, on the day you get married, your mind is totally free to absorb the fact that YOU GET MARRIED TODAY. 

If you're really lucky, you'll only do this once. So SOAK IT IN. Every single moment. Every engagement party. Every time someone wishes you well. Every gift you open. 

When Jordan and I entered our reception, we did so from a second-floor staircase. Suddenly, all these people - all the food, the band, the lights - everything came into focus. And it was absolutely overwhelming. At no other time in my life will I be surrounded by that much love, and I was holding the hand of the person who made life whole for me. 

Whether the napkins are cream or white, whether your aunt Brenda's hair catches fire during your ceremony, whether you drop the rings, whether your drunk uncle wipes out on the dance floor - it doesn't matter. (And hiccups make for great stories.)

What matters is that you've found the person who lights up your soul, and you're marrying them. That's what everyone showed up for. 

Every time things get overwhelming, remember the reason this is all happening: two people fell in love. 

Best wishes,
Mary Catherine

Photo by Leslee Mitchell Photography. 

5 (Well...4) Things: Essential Dog Accessories

I haven't had actual human babies yet, so for now, Tom Hanks is my fur-child. With any child, human or otherwise, comes a lot of toys and accessories. Here are our favorites: 

1. Collapsible dog bowls

Available online here, this dog bowl has been with us for two years every time we've gone hiking. It's lined, so it holds both water and food, and has a clip attachment so you can snap it right back onto a backpack after a water break. It makes taking your dog with you wherever - hiking, outdoor concert, dog park, etc. - really easy and convenient. 

2. Kong

I'm sure every dog owner out there has one of these bad boys, but just in case, let me sing its praises to you. The Kong is a rubber toy with a hollowed-out inside. It's used as a mental and physical stimulant - usually for when you leave the house - so that your dog isn't bored to death with nothing to do.

You can stuff it with anything you want (that's dog-friendly, of course) - our particular cocktail is two large scoops of peanut butter and three ice cube (the ice puts one more barrier between TH and the peanut butter, making this toy last even longer). Somebody recently told me they actually freeze their peanut butter and then load it in - genius! Anytime I leave the house, I don't feel as guilty when I know that he's in his crate DEVOURING his Kong, and will probably wear himself out and just pass out. I taught him well. #eatingandsleeping

3. Tiny balls

Not to be a Kong spokesperson here, BUT...there is no toy that brings my dog as much spastic joy as this one. We found one of these abandoned in the park one day, so we brought it home thinking it would maybe account for a couple of hours' worth of play. 

Y'all. 

When we threw Tom Hanks this ball, he lost his freakin' mind. I thought we were going to have to admit him to a doggie psych ward. 

He chased this around the house, somehow turning part-cat, pawing it, chasing it insanely, sliding across the floors, and when it inevitably rolled underneath our furniture, he would just come over to one of us and stare at us passive-aggressively until we retrieved it. 

They bounce, they squeak a little bit, and they come in a lot of different sizes. I'm telling you - if you haven't already, do it. You will be dying laughing watching your dog turn from a relatively normal creature into a super-spaz. "Go get your tiny ball!" elicits such energy and happiness in our house. 

4. The Aerobie

Jordan received this incredible ring as a gift from Emily Yearout, my brother's girlfriend, who is unparalleled at awesome gift-giving. Jordan and I have loved playing with it ourselves, and then one day, we realized Tom Hanks was chasing it. It was like Monkey In The Middle.

If you're like me, and you don't have a very strong throwing arm, it takes about 50 tosses of the tennis ball to actually tire your dog. Throw this disc? Easily 3x the distance that you can throw a ball - TH gets the opportunity to run full-speed and he is totally wiped when we come home. 

Be careful that they don't chew it, because that can change the shape - otherwise, this is a dynamite toy for bigger dogs with high energy. 

Hope everyone's weekend is filled with lots of playtime, running around outside, eating until you can't move, and flopping to the floor in total exhaustion. I know one dog whose weekend will be loaded all of those things...

5 Things: Habits Young Professional Women Should Break

1. Apologizing.

This one is probably something that could be applied to all women everywhere, but especially in a professional realm. Women, for whatever reason, feel compelled to say, "I'm sorry!" for a lot of things that don't warrant an apology, especially when it comes to asking clarifying questions and/or asking for something we know you need. Here are times that I have apologized when I could have skipped it: 

Someone at the other end of a board table was speaking so softly that none of the folks at the other end could hear a word he was saying: "Sorry, could you speak up a little bit? Thanks so much! Sorry about that!" 

I once didn't receive an e-mail that the rest of my team received, so I wrote the following e-mail to my manager: "Hey there - sorry to bug you, but I think I'm missing the e-mail detailing XYZ. Would you mind sending it along?"

If you go back and read those interactions without the apology, they are just as polite, but not as self-effacing. In both those situations, I was completely within my rights to ask the question I was asking, but, in both, felt the need to apologize in order to soften the question somehow. 

We think apologizing helps us look less demanding, but it ends up giving the impression that we think our very presence is an inconvenience to someone. Monitor yourself this week and just notice how many times you apologize when you don't have to. It's an interesting experiment. 

2. Saying, "To be honest..." 

In the same way that unnecessary apologizing is language that gives an impression opposite from the one we hope to give off, saying, "To be honest," before you start a sentence achieves a similar negative outcome.

Using, "To be honest," or "Frankly," or "Honestly," or "If I'm telling the truth here," as a pre-cursor to giving your opinion will subtly and subconsciously make the listener think that everything else you've said in your conversation with them has NOT been "honest" or "frank" or "truthful." 

It seems like, "To be honest," gets used most often when a person is trying to buy time because they aren't sure what they want to say. I am totally guilty of this, so in the past couple of years, I've tried to be more comfortable with silence. 

For example, if someone asks me something and I feel that panic of not having an instant answer ready, I intentionally take a deep breath, think on it, and then respond. There is power in silence that we tend to give away by filling that silence with fluff like, "To be honest;" when, in reality, that kind of fluff makes whatever we say next sound less authoritative.  

3. Using "just" in e-mails. 

Ellen Petry Leanse of Google wrote a super compelling and widely-read article about women using the word "just" in e-mails or in conversation. 

Basically, her thesis was that women use "just" as a "permission word." I'll let her take it from here: 

"I just wanted to check in on …"

"Just wondering if you'd decided between …"

"If you can just give me an answer, then …"

"I'm just following up on …"

I started paying attention, at work and beyond. It didn't take long to sense something I hadn't noticed before: Women used "just" more often than men.

It hit me that there was something about the word I didn't like. It was a "permission" word, in a way — a warm-up to a request, an apology for interrupting, a shy knock on a door before asking "Can I get something I need from you?"

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was a "child" word, to riff Transactional Analysis. As such it put the conversation partner into the "parent" position, granting them more authority and control. And that just didn't make sense.

When I read this article, I started vigilantly monitoring my use of "just," and found out that I use it ALL THE TIME. In e-mails, in conversation - it's everywhere. See if you notice the same thing. 

4. Dressing for the job you have.  

Color me a big anti-feminist, individuality-squashing 1950's man, but I'm telling you: women are more guilty than men of dressing inappropriately for work. 

Granted, men only have like three options that they get to mix and match, which is totally unfair and makes things way easier for them, but I digress. 

When getting ready for work in the morning, the questions that I started asking myself were: 

1. Would I be uncomfortable bending down in this top? 
2. Would I be uncomfortable sitting down in this skirt? 
3. Is this an outfit that the highest ranking person in my organization would be proud to see me wearing? 

Don't get me wrong, I have definitely not always followed those rules perfectly. But eventually, after lots of trial and error, I figured out that it is worth the extra effort on the front end of getting ready to feel 100% comfortable in my clothes, rather than throwing something on and rushing out the door only to find that my top is way lower-cut than I thought. Once, I had to use the folder I was given in a board meeting as a shield for my legs because the skirt I'd chosen in a rush was WAY too short when I sat down. It was all I could think about the entire day. 

There has been a huge decline in the sales of places like GAP, Ann Taylor, J. Crew, and Banana Republic. Why? Because professional women are masters of high-low fashion. What does that mean? That young women buy a few staple pieces from Nordstrom Rack or Saks Off Fifth, then fill the rest of their wardrobes in with Forever 21.

Not inherently a bad thing, but it does get tricky if tops that would work on a Saturday night are also being worn to the office. And it usually means that we don't function at our very best, because we're self-conscious about what we have on. My dad always says, "If you're going to fidget with your clothes all day, wear something else." 

5. Feeling like you owe anyone an explanation about your personal choices.

People, particularly older men, tend to have a few default questions for their younger, female co-workers. 

"So, do you have a boyfriend?"
"Meet anyone interesting?"
"You've been dating forever! When are you guys getting engaged?" 
"Thinking about having children soon?" 

Most often, these questions are born out of pure innocence. The people asking them aren't trying to be invasive or rude -- usually, they're just not quite sure what to say, but they want to appear interested in us as people. And that's totally harmless. 

But it can feel a little too personal, or even judgmental, when people with whom we haven't developed that sort of relationship start asking these questions. It's possible that the real answers are: 

"I just broke up with someone."
"No, and I'm really having a hard time being single." 
"This is a sensitive subject for me, and I don't want to talk about this." 
"I'm having fertility issues and I might just start crying right here on the spot." 

If you find yourself in a situation like this, where you're being asked a question that you really don't want to answer, YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER IT. It's that simple. You don't owe anyone an explanation about your personal life or choices, unless you actually want to engage in that conversation. 

You have every right to politely re-route the topic: 

Q. "So, do you have a boyfriend?" 
A. "Right now I'm really focused on work! Hey, tell me more about this project you mentioned..."

Q. "Meet anyone interesting?" 
A. "There are so many interesting people - I feel really lucky to work here. Remind me - how did you get started with the company?" 

Q. "You've been dating forever! When are you guys getting engaged?" 
A. "We've been dating a while, it's true! I really love him/her and I'm pumped to see where the relationship is going. Meanwhile, I needed some clarity about this e-mail..." 

Q. "Thinking about having children soon?" 
A. "We're enjoying time with each other right now. Really quickly - can I ask your advice on something? I'm not sure how to proceed with this client." 

Easy, polite, respectful. Those responses don't assume the person asking is nosey, but they do send the message that you aren't interested in discussing that subject any further. 

Shoutout to all my working ladies who are kicking ass every day!! Enjoy your weekends, girls!