stylishly_yours - Community Profile

Name:	We like to talk about style and stuff
Membership:	Moderated
Posting Access:	Anybody, Moderated
Description:	Style

This is a community for people who like to talk about style. Anyone can join and post, but only women can be friends, so that some conversations can remain women-only. (In practice, this means that you have to have a reference from someone who knows you in person, or two from people who know you online.) Most posts are non-locked anyway, but we do recommend that you f-lock posts about, for example, lingerie, bra sizes, clothing sizes etc. Not compulsory, but reasons probably apparent.

The community has always been intended to be about style, rather than fashion. (There are lots of fashion communities out there, on LJ and otherwise, for those who are more interested in this.) We see these as being two very different things. Whereas fashion is prescriptive, we believe that there are many different kinds of style and they are all welcome here.

The mods have always wanted

stylishly_yours to be a safe space, and we've therefore given some thought to putting together some guidelines for everyone in the community. This is version 1.1 – we would value feedback from anyone, and we will continue to adapt and develop them.

Inevitably, there are some prohibitions in the guidelines. We don't want people to feel that there are forbidden subjects – it's more that we'd like to ensure that subjects are treated with care when there's a possibility that someone could read your post or comment and feel hurt or criticised. We hope that these will not prevent anyone from posting on any style-related topic that interests them – but please do keep them in mind when writing your post.

Guidelines

People make different style choices. There are no right or wrong choices. Just because something works for one person doesn't mean it will work for everyone, and, conversely, just because something doesn't work for you doesn't mean that it won't work for anyone.

People are here for different reasons. Some are here to learn about style, some are here to talk about style, some are here because they would like to be more stylish, some are just here to chat and there will be other reasons that I haven't mentioned. The only wrong reasons to be here are trolling and snarking.

It's not okay to criticise the style choices of a member of the community, unless they have specifically requested feedback on their appearance or clothing.

It's not okay to criticise anyone's style choices, even if they are not in the community (e.g., famous people).

It's not okay to state that any looks or items of clothing are intrinsically unstylish (e.g., the 1980s, short skirts on older women, etc).

It's also not okay to suggest that any looks or items of clothing are intrinsically unsuited to anyone with particular features or colouring (e.g., women with large busts shouldn't wear polo-necks, redheads can't wear pink. etc).

It's not okay to criticise anyone's appearance (e.g., their weight or hairstyle).

While we recognise that style is a difficult and sensitive area for many women, and one of the things we would like this community to do is to help women to deal with their body image issues, please try to remember that your baggage is your baggage and don't fall into the trap of assuming that particular features are automatically "bad", as this can come across as critical of other women who share those features.