Captwannabe,
I think you miss my points.
No one questions the requirement that you follow company guidelines and present yourself to a high standard when on the job - a footballer would not turn up on the field wearing an opponents strip. When in the public eye, whether at school or in work most employers demand certain standards. But does turning up to an exam require this? Is arriving at Gatwick for your Class-1 in a suit really necessary? Once my suit has been worn on a train in the morning it already looks worse than my tidy casual dress does.
Why, in a bank for example, is a back office worker required to wear a tie at all times (or only allowed to remove it when the floor manager removes theirs), while in a media related company casual dress is entirely satisfactory? There would be no difference in professionalism between the two. The only explaination I can find is a needlessly conservative mindset - "We have always worn ties. I wear a tie. The boss wears a tie. If you take your tie off you aren't part of the team".
That to me is utter tosh but quite representative of a "don't speak out" mindset which I would have expected to be on the way out in aviation. If you are going to claim a specific standard of dress is required to make a good pilot, it should also be accepted that the same standard of dress may equally well mark a bad pilot.
As an aside, at an IT firm I used to work for I couldn't even enter the building in the morning having cycled in (and wearing casual clothes). I had to get changed at the back entrance and then enter the building from the front wearing a suit. It's an extreme example but probably not an isolated one and just shows how counter productive the presentation ethos can be.
My example of women was that once upon a time all kinds of excuses were used to keep women out of technical jobs - they don't have the right mentality, aren't mentally tough, empathatic rather than aggressive, always thinking about children, you name it. The judgement that someone of slightly sloppy appearence should also be kept out of an airline job seems very similar.
P.S. this rant is written by an anally-retentive, obsessive cleaner, ironer and tidier - I can't believe I am arguing in support of people who are the bane of my existence!