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Dressing for Success: Wrong?
The post on tattoos got me thinking. What is the difference between the ways we choose to dress, the ways in which we personally groom, and even tattoos? After all, see how women dress differently before and after Third-Wave Feminism.
It seems to me quite appropriate that people, who are in our society free to choose how they present themselves, are inviting judgment based on those choices. If one dresses Goth, one chooses to fit in with Goths. Everything from long hair to the color of our fingernails to whether or not we shower … they are all ways in which we signal to ourselves, and others, how we view them.
I merely use the data that people supply. A woman who dresses cheaply is telling us how she views herself, and telling others the same thing — which helps everyone to prioritize how they invest their time. Someone who does not shower either lacks a sense of smell, friends who care about them, or any desire to attract people who don’t care for body odour.
Are my preferences really as @phenry labeled them: “Judgemental, closed minded, and full of a sense of superiority?”
Published in General
Your preferences are judgmental and that’s OK. We all make judgements every day in the choices we make. I can make the judgment not to go to a restaurant where the servers have tattoos and nose rings and I have done so.
The manager of my nail salon hired a very nice girl , quite overweight, who wore low cut t-shirts, black nail polish and rings on every finger. She had a couple of tattoos also. Her look was offensive to many of the clients (I live in a retirement community) and really not appropriate to a grooming establishment. The manager had to actually train her in what was appropriate to wear. She looks much nicer now! It just amazes me though that someone had to explain this to her.
Clothing and personal ornamentation is tribal signaling. The complaint about “judging people by their appearances” seems to me more of a complaint about the opinion one has of the tribe.
Take the suit, for example. For myself (and I bet for you) wearing a suit marks one as part of the tribe of “serious people doing serious things.” A member of the underclass might think of that tribe as “the people who are keeping me down.” The union blue-collar guy might think of that tribe as “effete idiots screwing me over for their bonuses.”
Likewise, it seems to me that people with prominent tattoos aren’t objecting to being thought of as part of the tribe of tattoo people, but rather that folks like us don’t share their opinion of that tribe.
This seems strange to me. I know lots of workplaces where the dress code is business casual, and I’m not sure why that would make them less serious than a place where people wear suit-coats and ties. The suit-wearing sector is rather small these days, isn’t it? Is CNN, with their coiffed and suited anchormen, a more serious workplace than, say, an industrial supplies distributor, where khakis and polos are worn? I also think repairing a broken water main, in a soggy pit in the ground, in 20-degree Fahrenheit weather is rather serious work.
Of course, there are many things I don’t understand.
There are some practices that bother me. I loved the show Mr. Monk because I identified with him. I look at dreadlocks and wonder how on earth a person can keep them clean and free of nesting bugs. Body piercings and tattoos strike me the same way–great places for infections to start.
My kids’ generation takes the existence of broad-spectrum antibiotics for granted. They don’t worry about viruses and bacteria the way my parents’ and grandparents’ generations did. I think about this all the time when I see the sidewalk recycling bins with rotting food containers in them. My old Italian mother-in-law would think that was an invitation to disease. “Quick. Get the disinfectant!” :-)
I see two forces colliding soon: the anti-antibiotic forces (“We must deny everyone antibiotics because of superbugs and superinfections–do your part and don’t take one. Your premature death will help humanity live! Long live the Collective!”) and the all-natural-everything forces.
Years ago I read a book on microbiology written for nurses. It pointed out that the first line of defense against bacteria and viruses is the skin. (Band-aids actually save lives.) Any opening in the skin–even something as small and insignificant as eczema–can invite the viruses and bacteria. The fewer the openings in the skin, the better.
All of these things people are doing to themselves seem so risky to me.
Funny that. We all are given to predilections based upon appearance. Medulla oblongata in action.
I’m not sure we are judging people as much as we are reading them. We’re trying to make sense out of our surroundings and the people in them. We use visual cues to inform us quickly of opportunities or threats in our environment. All of the people with the tattoos and body piercings are doing that too. It’s the way human beings function.
I hate suits, I find them beastly uncomfortable – and neckties are irritations that get in the way of things or else catch food and coffee drips. I only wear suits to weddings, funerals, or a very rare (like every 3 years) social function. But I work in an industry where suits are a rarity, and absolutely send the wrong signal:
Now, all that being said, most of the time the office people are business casual (slacks or nice jeans, walking shoes but not loafers, no ties or jackets). The problem is that everyone dresses this way, there’s no standing out. Therefore, to denote that one is serious, and moreover important (that is to say, more important than the sales guy doing most of the talking), I do dress a few marks above that. No suit, but good sports coat, a quality shirt, either high-end tailored denim or wool slacks (no chinos), and better quality shoes (leather-soled loafers can be an issue if you might have to walk a truck yard or factory floor, but rubber-soled wingtips work). I’ll add a tie only if I’m at a trade show or corporate office.
Like it or not, appearances matter to others and denote hierarchy. But they also matter to people internally, and shape how we view ourselves, so dress yourself in a way that inspires confidence in yourself.
Personal hygiene and sartorial selections are elements of behaviour, and in my book, behaviour is the basis for legitimate discrimination. Discriminating against inborn characteristics is rightly derided as racist. Discriminating against immoral, anti-social, and destructive behaviours, including behaviours influenced by inborn characteristics, is necessary for the survival of society.
I noticed this picture a while back in the Wall Street Journal of people at an Amazon hiring event. Having done quite a bit of interviewing in my corporate years I was astonished at how little effort most of the people put into their appearance. I posted it on social media and the repsponses were interesting. Most people agreed that applicants were hurting their chances by appearing slovenly but someone said that for low wage jobs a company should not expect nice dressers. I think that would be an example of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Your appearance sends a message, whether it’s the one you intend or not.
I looked at your link: those women were hit by third wave feminism harder than a Mack truck.
These responses are so good! Yes, we do “evaluate” others by their appearance. In our day-to-day encounters, that totally makes sense. We’re just dealing with one another for brief moments, and we have to have some way to navigate. @skipsul, you apparently work in the type of world where my husband worked for many years: a suit meant you didn’t do the “work” that the others did–you were likely an impediment to that work.
As for tattoos…our society has taken a dramatic shift on who gets body art, hasn’t it??
A major part of being a good employee is the ability to understand rules and follow them; when someone shows up at an interview not looking right, they are communicating that they will be more trouble than they are worth. One of my younger cousins recently went to an interview to be a police officer. The guy interviewing him fell all over him because he wore nice pants and a suit jacket; I think he wore a tie too, I can’t remember, but the point is, he showed up far better dressed than anyone else, and it worked very much in his favor. The man who interviewed him told him that guys went in to interviews to be police officers in shorts and flip flip flops all the time. Those who won’t pay attention to how they look are making life much easier for those who do.
When I see someone with ridiculous tattoos and/or piercings complain about being discriminated against, I see someone with a victim complex who has set themselves up to fail; someone who wears shorts and flip flops to any job interview falls in the same category. It is almost as if they don’t want to be judged on their qualifications, they would rather be rejected for their appearance. It seems as though they are planning to fail ahead of time, and are just looking for an excuse to fail. It is very sad.
After the French Revolution, dress codes (both formal and informal) were rewritten to erase, or at least mask, class distinctions. At the time, only the very rich could afford fancy dress, and at the time “fancy dress” could virtually be defined as “anything with a bit of colour in it”.
So, after the Revolution, the rich toned down their colours and their materials, to better blend in which the masses who couldn’t even afford to keep aristocratic finery clean, let alone being able to afford the finery itself.
This state of affairs largely lasted into the second half of the 20th Century. e.g. Photos from pre-Depression times show all the men and women dressed more-or-less alike, and well into the 20th Century a “man in uniform” was a most desireable sort of fellow.
So, what changed?
Technology. Namely, synthetic dyes and synthetic fibres, but also movies and television in colour.
The cost of “fancy dress” started to drop significantly after World War II. Think of 1950s pastels and Marilyn Monroe’s “shocking pink”. As costs dropped, “self-expression” started to replace “humility” on the list of the cardinal virtues
Now, when more and more people gain the ability to “express themselves”, it becomes more and more difficult for an individual to stand out from the crowd. As such, the messages they send out either have to be supremely persuasive (which is really difficult, i.e. very expensive in terms of intellectual resources) or extremely shocking (which is really easy, i.e. very inexpensive in terms of intellectual resources).
To put it another way: The cost of media production and distribution has dropped to the point where it’s become virtually negligible, but the cost of effective message design is as expensive as it has ever been.
In this I count “clothing and fashion” as a form of media. It’s a medium through which one expresses a message.
This is entirely correct. They do indeed send out those messages.
At the same time, however, many of these people are also fighting in the courts and in the legislatures to forbid anybody from ever having reasonable reactions to the messages they are sending out. For them, their right to “self-expression” trumps your right to react to the messages they express. They like that sending out a message is now so cheap, but they hate that getting others to accept, adopt, and validate that message is still so expensive.
In other words: It’s informational socialism. Where classical socialists say they have a right to your property, informational socialists say they have a right to your mind.
Business casual can mean many things. In Skip’s line of work, it means “we’re dressing as seriously as possible given the physical demands of our jobs.” At the offices I’ve worked in, it means “we want you to take enough effort with your appearance to signal that you take your job seriously, but you don’t have to wear a suit because you don’t interact with clients.”
And yes, news readers wear suits in order to signal that you should take them more seriously than the random bum on the street, even if the bum probably has a better grasp of reality.
I have a slight quibble with the cheap slut comment :) When women show up at job interviews and work, they should dress appropriately for the job, ie, modestly, for most jobs. But I am not totally clear on what makes a woman look like a cheap slut: does a bikini do that? I suppose it depends on what kind of bikini, for most people. I liked wearing bikinis when I was younger, but G strings? I was against G strings, and still am.
As someone who was moderately immodest, though, I always kind of appreciated the extremely immodest, because they made me look tame by comparison. Once, on a trip to the beach, my parents were horrified by the string bikini I was wearing: they took me to a swimsuit shop to buy a new bathing suit, but every single bathing suit there was far more immodest than what I was wearing. Same thing happened when I was shopping for a wedding dress: when we first started out, my mother told me that she would kill me if I wore a strapless dress. After seeing most of the other dresses, by the end of it, she ordered me to wear a strapless dress: strapless was very modest compared to a lot of the other stuff that was on display.
It matters where you are wearing what you are wearing: if you want to go strapless at the nightclub, that is one thing, as long as you accept that some people will look down on it and have every right to: but at work, you should dress the way your employer wants you to.
@iwe, I still find your discussion here of clothing offering a ‘projective’ function for men – and a ‘protective’ function for women (along with the general projective availability) intriguing…
I want to repeat, I meant no personal insult, I was just pointing out that you were not just saying ‘It’s not for me, and I don’t like it’ but that ‘anyone who does it is clearly low class’.
I completely understand and do not deny the concept of dress for success. In fact, the top management of my workplace recently had an all out push to lower the dress code from ‘business causal’ to shorts and T shirts. Yes, the department head came in in cargo shorts to sell it. They were clear, we value comfort and performance over appearance.
Yet I, mostly only I, still come to work every day in a collared shirt and black slacks. It is what I’m comfortable in, plus, I understand that to many people it makes me look more ‘serious’. Besides, what am I gonna do with this closet full of business causal junk if I can’t wear it to work anymore? ;)
My point was not that dressing nicely does not leave better impressions, and I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t recommend that anyone take that in to account when looking for a job, or when going to work, etc.
My point was that a suit and tie only leaves the impression of seriousness. It isn’t a very reliable indicator. For example, it is common knowledge that if you are going to court for any reason, you should wear your suit. Is that because you are not guilty of whatever offense you are in for? No. It’s because it will make you look like you care. You probably don’t care, you probably aren’t innocent, you just know that if you put on the costume and play the game, you will likely get better results.
So the suit can be a lie. An effective lie, but a lie none the less.
Further, to a person who makes their living by sweating and getting their hands dirty, a suit says loud and clear ‘I don’t expect to get my trousers smudged by anything today’. So in that context, wearing your Sunday best to work signals to many that you consider yourself on a level above physical labor. Some may find that impressive, I do not.
In the end, my point on that thread, and in my comments to you, are that if you are that caught up in snap judgement of people based upon their appearance, you are not getting an accurate picture of that person, be it positive or negative. And that the best dressed, tattoo free, swabbed and coiffed person in the room is seldom the one who is most experienced, capable, or intelligent. Those people usually have dirt under their fingernails.
I think the word “judgment” gets a bad rap nowadays. The Progressives think that judgement is bad, no matter what. But judgment is very important in many ways. For example, if I was working with a client (I was a consultant and trainer) who dressed like a slob or provocatively, and they had difficulty in their relationships with their employees (if managers) or co-workers, and their appearance came up as part of the problem, I’d say so. (What, so they could fire me, right?) Personally, I do think the way we dress makes a statement. When I go to the grocery store, I’m in jeans or in shorts in the summer (but never short-shorts.) If I’m meeting with close friends and it’s strictly casual, I’ll dress casually. But if I’m giving a talk and want to establish credibility before I open my mouth, I will dress as the situation demands–which was often more nicely than the people I was speaking to. They wanted to “see” (not just hear) a credible person, so I dressed the role.
Totally agree. But what you left out is that judgement can easily go overboard. The original subject was tattoos. The premise was that anyone, especially a woman, who has a tattoo is rightfully judged as low class, unstable, you name it. That the very choice to allow a design on your skin shows you have no legitimate right to participate in society- you have rejected it. You don’t qualify for a job, for respect, for inclusion.
Well, I took umbrage at that. I have a discreet tat. I have many friends and family members with some not so discreet tats. All of them are productive, hard working, family loving folks.
So the universal condemnation felt to me as unwise, and excessively judgemental.
I’m OK with anyone saying they don’t like tats, they don’t think they are attractive, they detract from one’s appearance. Those are opinions, and you know what they say about opinions. ( We all have one, and they all stink.) But if they want to carry that opinion over to making a sweeping generalization about a persons character and value I think it shows something more about their judgement than it does the person they are judging.
Lighten up, accept that everyone doesn’t see things the same way as you, and save your condemnatory judgements for things that really matter, like character and honesty. Just my opinion. And we all know what they say…
I hear you, @phenry. But if I have nothing else to go on, and if the person waited on customers and the customers had nothing else to go on, then I see a problem. You are correct in that we can’t know what’s in a person’s heart. If I have a person come to my meditation group (free, anyone can join), I try to let go of judgment about their appearance; I will have a chance to get to know that person better if they come back. But if a person is not empathic about how others see them, and that in some environments, that matters, I’m not so much.
At our workout facility, we have a black fellow with a goatee, braids (partly died blond) in a ponytail. I don’t like how he looks. He may be nice, smart, capable, but I don’t like the way he looks, and I don’t know if I would have hired him in a 55+ community. Others who say they like him–well, good for them. I don’t dislike him, since I don’t know him, but I’m not impressed and am not inclined to get to know him better.
People choose the clothes they wear largely to convey a message. If you choose to wear a hijab, you are letting the world know you’re Muslim; if you wear a yarmulke and tallit, you’re letting the world know you’re Jewish; if you wear a school t-shirt, you’re letting people know you went to that school; and so on. Clothing and grooming is how we visually convey groups that we belong to or personal values. A woman who dresses modestly conveys a different set of values from a woman who wears short, low cut, and tight clothing.
@1967mustangman had this argument early in our relationship (which combined with disagreements on cleaning led to a two week break up right before he was going to propose) about the importance of dress and presentation. In a perfect society we wouldn’t judge people based on outward appearance, but we don’t live in a perfect society. People will judge you and make assumptions about you based on your appearance, because you chose to dress that way. To pretend otherwise is being just as fanciful and naive as the progressives who yell “but socialism just hasn’t been done right!” That’s why the feminist argument is crap that women should never have any sort of sexual attention thrown their way just because they’re wearing a bikini or walking around topless- those women are choosing to convey a certain message to those that see them, and therefore have to live with the attention it draws (not saying that it’s ok to grope or assault someone for dressing provocatively).
As for tattoos, many of my friends that have tattoos have multiple and treat them with a casualness that I don’t understand. It’s something that goes on your body forever, it’s not a pair of earrings. A friend from Portland just posted pictures of her two new tattoos- both tributes to her recent travels to New Orleans and Venezuela. I personally don’t understand the desire to treat your body like the stamp pages of your passport. Some tattoos are ok, but when the person is covered in them, it becomes distracting and detracts from who the person actually is. In many ways it can become a self-imposed barrier, inviting people to spend more time looking at the designs on one’s body rather than listening to the content of one’s conversation.
Also, you can judge someone you’ve just met without being mean or hateful towards them. I can meet someone wearing a graphic tee of some sort of binary code joke and assume that person is probably in tech of some kind. From that I can have an idea based on stereotypes about what their interests might be. Because I have some pre-formed ideas about them doesn’t mean that I write them off or solidly stand by my assumptions after getting to know them better.
They can also prejudge you based on whether you get the joke, or even recognize that it’s a tech joke. They might be trolling for the “perfect” girlfriend. (-:
… or you received it as a gift, or you simply like their football team.
Yes, but you’re still identifying yourself as someone who supports that school. If it truly didn’t matter what we wore, then wearing a KKK shirt or a “Hitler was the shizz” t-shirt wouldn’t be a problem. But that’s not reality.
How much are you willing to pay for it?
Let me put it this way. About two years back my employer got bought out, and the company transitioned from one that had frequent layoffs to one that can’t attract enough production workers largely because of an expectation of layoffs. A friend of mine recognized a new hire from his past; she had certain mental health issues (Taking his word on it, mind you). He mentioned it to her new supervisor. “Oh, you mean the crazy girl?”
If we hired the crazy girl, knowing that she had issues, then I don’t see scrupling to hire the guy in the beard, or with the prominent tattoos, or with wrench sockets in his earlobes. (I understand she stopped showing up for work approximately a week after she started. Again, hearsay.)
Let’s say you’re hiring people. You’ve got four spots you need to fill. You schedule seven interviews and only three people show up in a shirt and tie. Do you pick the least-slovenly of the rest, or do you raise the wage you’re willing to pay?
From the opposite angle. Let’s say I’m a prospective minion showing up to a job interview in a shirt and tie. I suppose it’s easy to say that I’m more likely to get the job. Is there any reason to believe that I’ll be offered one iota more compensation? Is there any evidence that cubicle jerks wearing the full suit and tie get paid more for similar labor than cubicle jerks in a business casual environment?
Are there places in America where women walk around topless? :)
Portland, during a protest.
Wow, I was unaware of that. They aren’t kidding when they say that Portland is weird, are they? :)