There are experts who advise those working at home to sit down at a desk in a shirt and tie, or the female equivalent, in order to take themselves seriously. This at a time when mainstream professional culture has become sporty and relaxed - not to say disheveled - as never before. "Casual Friday" has ushered an influx of what was once considered "private" clothing into the public sphere. Flip flops have climbed out of the pool, team jerseys have broken out of the locker room, and Crocs have transcended wherever they originally hung out. The lab?

For that matter, "foundation garments" -- bra straps, boxer waistbands, thong straps, etc. -- are everywhere visible, and not by mistake. "In olden days, a glimpse of stocking/was looked at as something shocking/Now heaven knows/Anything goes," wrote Cole Porter. When was that? The Middle Ages?

Valerie Block is the author of the novels Don't Make A Scene (Ballantine, 2007),...read more

I think the whole point of working at home is being able to take your work, but not yourself, seriously. And as I work at home, I have two kinds of clothing: sweatpants and tee shirts with permanent salad dressing stains, and outfits that are probably too nice or formal for the things I want to do in them. Each time I take out a pair of trousers, I think: why mess them up?

But my current private-item-in-public dilemma involves hair. If you have been struggling all your life to make what comes on your head behave professionally, as I have, you'll be as delighted as I was to discover a new approach to frizzy/curly hair, which will put you at peace with your curls. The method involves various products, and pinning the hair while wet with old-fashioned straight silver pins and letting it air dry. As I swim three times a week, this means going out in public with pinned wet hair.

But is a pinned head as déclassé as appearing in public in curlers? Is it any worse than wet hair without pins? Isn't the ultimate goal - dry, happy curls - worth the momentary worry that I will bump into someone I know in a state of undress? Am I a pinhead or a style maverick?

Washington manners-monger Letitia Baldridge throws my entire enterprise into question, saying, "a woman who frizzes her hair all over and wears it ‘tangled jungle vines' style may look to others like an oversized scouring pad."

No, no, no, Letitia! "Tangled jungle vines" and "oversized scouring pad" are two different looks, the former being what we aspire to, the latter being what we resemble upon awakening.

There are neighborhoods where you really must be wearing makeup, earrings, matching shoes and pocket book in order to leave the house with your well-coiffed head held high; no doubt Letitia Baldridge lives in one of these places in blow-dried, matching, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant tidiness, oblivious to other ways of being. I went out of my way to find a place to live where, if I bump into a neighbor at the bank, I am likely to find her in sweatpants with wet hair, too. And I do. My town is as relaxed, unmatched, un-made up and unadorned as a casual Tuesday at the average dot-com start-up.

But sadly, I must report: I am the only one walking the streets of my town wearing silver pins on my head. Each time I do it, I remind myself that the hair clamps one sees out and about on everyone's head originally began as hairdressers' tools. The clamps broke out of the salon into wide public distribution because they were so useful. But each time I pin the curls, I feel a little sheepish, and pray not to bump into anyone I know displaying my private side in such a public fashion....read more blogs