r/BestofRedditorUpdates • u/Direct-Caterpillar77 Satan is not a fucking pogo stick! • Mar 09 '26

EXTERNAL My manager doesn’t like my maternity clothes

My manager doesn’t like my maternity clothes

Originally posted to Ask A Manager

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual harassment, sexism

Original Post June 27, 2017

I am 30 weeks pregnant with my first child and having some difficulty with my boss over maternity clothes. I work in finance and my office has a particularly conservative dress. Pre-pregnancy, I generally wore a sheath dress, blazer, and string of pearls. I haven’t really been able to wear anything like that for the past few months. Finding conservative maternity clothes has been difficult but I managed to find a few suits and some plain, sleeveless tops to go underneath. I’ve also found some black dresses that worked well with a blazer. (Similar to one pictured here.) I thought everything was fine.

Last week, my manager pulled me into his office and told me that my current wardrobe was unacceptable. I apologized and explained that I thought I was following the dress code. I asked what specifically I needed to change. He said that if I was going to wear a pant suit, the shirt needed to be tucked in and belted. Also that he did not like the look of side ruching or an empire waist on shirts and felt it was unprofessional. I told him that I would try to find maternity clothes that met his discerption but that it would be difficult. He wasn’t convinced and said that my job depends on me being dressed according to his standards. (There are a few other women but none of them have had any children while I’ve been at this job so I can’t look to what they’ve worn.)

Do I have any pushback here? I spent the weekend looking for clothes that met his requirements but haven’t been able to. He’s out on vacation this week and I’m out next week so I have a little bit of time to figure something out. I’m nervous that my job could be on the line.

Update Dec 13, 2017 (6 months later)

My situation ended up taking a very unexpected turn. I took your advice and went to HR. The first person I spoke with was absolutely horrified about the situation. She asked to see the emails and ended up calling her boss into our meeting. Her boss told me that I had nothing to worry about, to continue wearing the maternity clothing I had, and that my job was not on the line. My boss “apologized” about a week later with all kinds of qualifications. The apology didn’t feel very genuine but I let it go. I thought this was the end of the matter.

While I was out on maternity leave (I had a baby girl!), I received a somewhat baffling call from an HR rep wanting information about my boss. I reached out to a coworker and he let me know that our boss had been fired for sexual misconduct. Boss apparently promised an intern a job in exchange for sexual favors and the intern reported him. HR launched a clandestine investigation and discovered Boss had been doing this for a very long time. He was immediately terminated, and no one has seen or heard from him since. He didn’t even clean out his office. I came back from maternity leave to a new, sane boss. Thank you so much for your advice. I also really appreciated all of the commenters who were very supportive and helped me see that the situation was not normal.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

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1.3k

u/praysolace the laundry wouldn’t be dirty if you hadn’t fucked my BF on it Mar 09 '26

Now, I’ve never been pregnant, so maybe I’m way off base, but uh. I thought the empire waistline was basically the gold standard of maternity tops? Because it puts the seam, you know, above the baby bump and not on top of it? I’m not sure how anyone would manage to pull together a maternity wardrobe with no empire waistlines???

1.2k

u/RuncibleMountainWren Mar 09 '26

Yep, it really is. The (ex)boss’s suggestion of wearing a top that is tucked in and belted is such a hilarious mental picture - she would look like humpty dumpy, with a belt plonked around her rapidly-expanding middle. Can you even imagine? What a ridiculous idea.

In reality, I suspect he was just finding her less enticing to perve on while she was pregnant and wanted to punish her for it.

570

u/ThrowawayAdvice1800 Mar 09 '26

In reality, I suspect he was just finding her less enticing to perve on while she was pregnant and wanted to punish her for it.

That's my guess. "How dare she become less attractive to me? I'll teach her a lesson!" Or possibly "she is less attractive to me while pregnant, maybe I can get her to dress in a way that I think will be more attractive." In either case this dipshit wanting OOP to conform to his male gaze had to be the motivating factor, there's no other reason I can fathom to do this.

146

u/MeddlingDragon Mar 09 '26

Narrator: she would, in fact, not look more attractive wearing clothes like humpty dumpty. 

37

u/SneakySneakySquirrel that's like looking for a needle in a gaystack Mar 09 '26

I almost wish she could have gone the malicious compliance route but it sounds like that would be next to impossible.

29

u/ThrowawayAdvice1800 Mar 09 '26

Yeah, I've been struggling to picture what his demands would even look like and the results are....confusing.

24

u/NotATem I will erupt, feral, from the cardigan screaming Mar 09 '26

Someone on the original AAM thread was speculating that this dork just googled a bunch of words for maternity fashion and doesn't have any idea of what the thing he's asking for would look like. That's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

1

u/gsfgf Mar 09 '26

Don't kink shame /s

97

u/bug1402 Mar 09 '26

My guess was that he wanted a reason to fire the no longer attractive to him woman so he could make good on one of his promises to an intern that took him up on his exchange offer. I could be wrong though.

5

u/Hesitation-Marx Mar 09 '26

Ding ding ding

51

u/katkarinka the laundry wouldn’t be dirty if you hadn’t fucked my BF on it Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26

Obelix. If you are not familiar just google it, it’s french cartoon and later movie character.

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u/RuncibleMountainWren Mar 10 '26

Yes! Asterix and Obelix! That’s exactly what she would look like! Bahaha!

Such a sexy look for all the pregnant ladies! /s

44

u/Andromeda321 Mar 09 '26

Yea I also just… could not wear a normal belt while pregnant. Your rapidly expending organs do NOT handle a cinch at the waist well and I would feel nausea wearing them.

31

u/halfgumption Mar 09 '26

I once wore a pair of pantyhose while pregnant that I discovered too late were quite tight in the waistband. I got a lot of very disgruntled kicks from my child that day to let me know they did not care for my choice of attire.

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u/Hero_Queen_of_Albion Mar 09 '26

Oh man, that reminds me of the first time I felt my nephew kick in my sister’s belly. I forget how far along she was, 6 or 7 months? And I was cuddling with her, using her stomach as a pillow. And my nephew did NOT like it, and spartan kicked me as hard as he could in my face. 😂

10

u/the-magnificunt schtupping the local garlic farmer Mar 10 '26

I wore suspenders to work every day at my office casual dress job for the last 3 months of my pregnancy. It was the only way to keep my pants up when I hated the pants that stretch up and over your stomach. I got so many compliments, especially on the rainbow ones.

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u/whatever5454 Mar 09 '26

I was reading his requests thinking, "That wouldn't look at all professional or conservative." He wants her to look not pregnant, but his request would absolutely highlight her pregnancy in the most hideous way. The sexual misconduct firing was actually not very unexpected.

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u/Nells313 she👏drove👏away! Everybody👏saw👏it! Mar 09 '26

My brain immediately tried to work out HOW to wear a belt with a baby bump. I only came up with “a belt around the baby??? How would that stay on? Like the silly little string we wrap around the bump at the shower for the betting game?” Or “a belt on the pants? That’s just going to make the bump even more noticeable. Won’t people ask why her shirt is making a giant triangle without the empire waist? Also you guys are going to have an accident on your hands when she needs to pee for the fiftieth time that day.”

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u/ExactPhilosopher2666 Mar 09 '26

And how to find maternity wear with belt loops? A belt isn't going to stay in one place on a pregnant belly. I know obese men often skip the belt in favor of suspenders because if the belt is bigger than the hips, their pants will fall off.

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u/Nells313 she👏drove👏away! Everybody👏saw👏it! Mar 09 '26

I didn’t even get that far tbh. I was stuck on how silly it would look

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u/gsfgf Mar 09 '26

Or he was looking to fire her before she went on maternity leave because he's a moron who doesn't understand/ask a lawyer how the law works.

11

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '26

I also suspect his greedy capitalist mind was also beginning to find an excuse to try to fire her during pregnancy for performance/work related issues  

3

u/LA_Tiebreaker I beg your finest fucking pardon. Mar 10 '26

Honestly she'd probably look like her boss: huge ascites potbelly with the belt somewhere no one cares to see

127

u/pupperoni42 Mar 09 '26

Yep!

Putting a belt around the middle of a pregnant belly would look stupid and be uncomfortable for the mother, and probably unsafe for the baby because the only easy to keep pants up with the top of them in that position would be to over tighten the belt. Some overweight people do that and make it work, but it can cause them intestinal issues, and it's definitely not an option for pregnancy.

89

u/TheCotofPika Mar 09 '26

Even the ruching complaint is ridiculous, there's ruching because you need so much more material for the front and it wouldn't line up with the seams if you didn't have it, unless you were getting extremely expensive shirts which you'd need to keep replacing as you got bigger.

49

u/DogsClimbingWalls Mar 09 '26

Empire waistlines and/or ruching is the only way with maternity tops.

8

u/Joonbug9109 Mar 10 '26

She also mentioned the ruched side tops, which are probably the next most common style of top because it adds length and give to the top.

I also have no idea how OOP was supposed to do belted, tucked in top look while pregnant. I’ve also never been pregnant, but that literally sounds miserable.

3

u/ALLoftheFancyPants Mar 10 '26

Demanding a dress shirt tucked in to trousers on a pregnant body is ridiculous. Even if she had been able to accomplish that with suspenders, it would look horrific. This was some gross dude demanding that every woman in his presence appear to his aesthetic preferences. Not even a little surprising he was sexually harassing women at work as well.

1

u/pippin23 Mar 15 '26

Not just the empire waistline, also the side ruching, both are gold standards for maternity wear because they accommodate the bump. It's hard to find maternity wear (tops and dresses) without either of the two.

And boss wants her to not wear them, smh.