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Affectation vs. Authenticity: Are your clothes telling the truth?
I recently started listening to The Voice of Free Planet X, which is a very interesting daily podcast put out by creative ubermensch Jared Axelrod. In Wednesday’s episode (#136), Jared lamented the decline of suits, ties and other formal wear. He argued that the disappearance of these garments from everyday life has led to a sort of inverse restriction on our clothing options. He quoted Lord Whimsy’s recent thoughts on this subject:
As if trying to look “casual” wasn’t just an uglier kind of affectation! To do away with such baseline standards of adult dress is the illusion of freedom, a lame gesture that leads to even more restrictive mores. Adolescent-minded Boomers won’t be satisfied until the only socially acceptable way to present oneself is to dress like a six year-old. And when that day comes, none of us will feel free–just undignified and infantilized. Given the choice, I’d rather be coerced into looking like an adult than a child.
Jared concluded that “We are born naked; everything else is cosplay.” The implication I took away from that was that the suit and tie are no more artificial than anything else someone might choose to wear. I haven’t spoken to either Jared or Lord Whimsy about this, but what they seem to be arguing is that all clothes are pretense, pure affectation laid over top of the — ahem — naked truth of our physical bodies.
I respectfully disagree. To explain why, I’m going to use an extreme example to illustrate a point:
There is a distinctive article of clothing that is usually worn by Catholic priests when they go out in public, the black shirt with the white collar. There are some other vestments that may or may not be worn with it, but the shirt and collar are the most distinctive parts of the outfit.
Now, as far as I am aware, there is no law that prohibits me from going out and getting a black shirt with a priest’s collar and wearing it as I go about my daily business. But even if I don’t say anything about it, even if I do nothing else to try to convince people that I’m a priest, people will ASSUME that I am and they will treat me accordingly. And that would be disingenuous of me, because I’m not a priest. The outfit would encourage people to draw false conclusions about who and what I was, and I might be able to use those false conclusions to manipulate them into reacting to me the way I wanted them to.
Like I said, that’s an extreme example, — but I think that we can do the same thing with other kinds of clothes. Our clothing — like hairstyles, jewelry, piercings, tattoos, or any other form of body modification — is a way of making a statement about ourselves to the people around us. And just like the words we say, that statement can be something true, or it can be a lie. Our manner of dress can be a window into our inner self, or it can be a façade that we put up to disguise what lies below the surface.
For me, the jeans and t-shirts that I wear in my everyday life are making an accurate statement about me. I value comfort and practicality, clothes that can take some abuse before wearing out. I don’t want to spend a lot of time or money on clothing because there are other things that are more important to me. My shirts usually have some sort of snarky or humorous message on them, and that reveals something else about my personality.
When I put on a suit, I’m putting on a costume. The jacket, the tie, the uncomfortable shoes, and the cuff-links, all of them represent a persona that is different from the person I am in my everyday life. Sometimes, that’s not a bad thing: weddings, funerals and other formal engagements are the rituals of modern society, and we put on costumes in order to symbolize that these events are special moments that are set apart from our daily lives. We willingly put on those costumes and subsume our own identities into the collective identity of the community – because, in that moment, our individual identities are less important than the role we’re playing. We symbolically become the community that is bearing witness to these important moments, and in so doing we take the attention off of ourselves and put it where it belongs: on the people we are honoring with the ritual.
If I were to adopt that same persona in my daily life, though, it would not be an accurate depiction of my inner self. That suit, that costume, would become a barrier between me and the world, a layer of emotional defense that would lead people to draw false conclusions about the kind of person I was. For me, it would be an affectation, because it would be using a medium of self-expression to say something untrue about myself.
Now, I hasten to add that what is an affectation for me might not be an affectation for someone else. If you find that wearing a tie or a sport coat leads to a better expression of your inner self, then by all means go for it. The beauty of our relaxed attitude toward modern fashion is that you can CHOOSE to dress as casually, formally, or eccentrically as you wish. It’s not as if anyone at the office is going to disapprove if you choose to wear a suit, and even at a science fiction convention, the bouncers aren’t going to throw you out for dressing inappropriately because you showed up in a blazer.
Contrary to what Lord Whimsy says, formal clothes have not disappeared; they’ve just become optional. Corporate America has recognized that people do not have to subsume their personalities beneath a standard uniform of suits and ties in order to be capable, effective workers. The lack of a uniform standard for “proper” attire gives us more flexibility to choose clothes that reflect who we are. That’s the true measure of whether an outfit is an affectation or authentic: not whether it’s fancy or simple, formal or casual, but whether it is a true expression of yourself.
6 Responses to “Affectation vs. Authenticity: Are your clothes telling the truth?”
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June 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Well put.
On the other hand, when the president of the company goes around in a polo shirt, dockers, and tennis shoes, but still acts like an officious bastard who expects everyone to cater to his every whim, when the polo shirt and dockers becomes the NEW corporate costume, where is one to turn for informality? Blue jeans and tee shirts, fine…
Then what when the tee shirt and blue jeans outfit becomes the new corporate costume?
I think Whimsy has a point, too.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Lord Whimsey’s comments remind me of a favorite comic posted on the door of a favorite prof’s office. The scene is a punk rock show. The crowd is silent. Three of the punked-out band members are silent and staring at their base player–a short-haired gentleman in a suit and tie. The caption read something like, “Bob discovers that freedom of expression only goes so far.”
As for my own style: I tend toward denim and t-shirts. In the past, this was because I worked manual labor jobs where it was assumed one’s close would be beat to ****, covered in various dusts and thrown in the trash after a year.
Now I wear denim and t-shirts for a different reason. I was “homely” to begin with and I’ve gained over 100lbs since my construction days and I’ve realized that there are no magic clothes (or hair style or shoes or whatever) that can make me look good. As such, there is no point in depriving my children of the things they need so I can be a fat guy in a suit rather than a fat guy in a t-shirt. *grin*
June 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am
[...] but mainly extend Episode 136, only a little more rambley. Most of the rambling is directed toward Chris Lester’s excellent essay which comes really close to being right, and then misses the point completely. Close, though. Real [...]
June 12th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Well said. But there is a point that I think you and Jared both missed. For the last 20 years or so I’ve been the chief computer expert in my various jobs. I discovered way back that customers expected me to look a particular way before they would really take me seriously. It was a personal style that screamed to them uber geek.
While my sales and marketing associates were taken seriously wearing a suit and tie, I got the best results looking rather unkempt. I affected a ponytail which looked awful no matter what I did, and went for a full beard and mustache before trimming back to a goatee. If I dressed in a suit I would be ignored. But when I dressed in golf shirt or t-shirt and jeans I was instantly identifiable as the tech genius.
Contrary to Jared’s main point, I was more successful when I fit the mold of what the customer thought a tech guy should look like. When I tried to look debonair I was not taken seriously.
I believe the thinking back then went like this: “He looks like a mess, but they still employ him. He must be highly competent or he couldn’t get away with it.” I know certain people who “get away with it” today. They dress Goth and it seems to be taken as a sign they’re very good at what they do.
Now that everyone in my industry has affected my mode of dress, I am pining for a way to be the rebel again. Maybe it’s time for me to find a nice blazer and tie to wear. Maybe if I get the color combinations so discordant my customers will think, “He must be the best. Otherwise how could he get away with that outfit?”
-Paul
June 13th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Paul’s excellent point brings home the fact that a lot of industries have an ‘unspoken uniform’ - and that applies not only to the interior working environment but the exterior perception by the ‘public’ or people being served by the workers. Even within seemingly more casual work places there is often an unwritten code - one that’s hard to decipher for new employees and yet their success in that place may just depend on decoding it correctly.
For instance, in the animation industry (in which I’ve just spent the last seven years) I realized that production people were more accepted by artists and Directors alike if they wore funky, creative outfits - fashion wasn’t important so much as showing a sense of personal creativity and youthful fun, no matter what your age (a dose of ’sexy’ helped too - for guys and girls). If you could find the balance between individually funky and creatively organized you were a hit with the artists and Directors, making your job easier to do and helping guarantee employment on the next show. The irony was that dressing for perceived competence at this level pretty much cut you off from advancing into the more senior ranks, thereby keeping you down, yet anything more conservative smacked of being overly ambitious and therefore to be avoided or that you were a ‘temp’ and didn’t really fit. Less casual and creative dress, while generally acceptable, often made you little more than furniture and easily overlooked for the next season of work.
Another example: My husband, in the animation industry since he was in his late teens as an artist, mentioned the Hawaiian shirt era of the late 70’s through to the early 90’s where the (predominantly male) artists were known by their regular wearing of Hawaiian print shirts. At a time when nobody wore Hawaiian shirts to work unless your company was progressive enough to have ‘casual Friday’ it was the serious and good-enough-to-be-regularly-employed artist’s way of thumbing their nose at conventional work situations and declaring their superiority. The irony again here being that the animators created their own unspoken uniform. Not only that, to many outsiders the ridiculously repetitive work and high pressure schedules were seen as little more than playing around and the animators didn’t garner much respect at all. In the end they had the same problem with their bosses. While animation is by no means an equivalent workhorse to being a factory worker it’s not a vocation for the lazy and one of the results of this casual affectation by artists has backlashed on them by demanding high quantity and quality output in very short periods of time, with no rise in pay. Any artist who stops to catch their breath (and their sleep) in between projects risks losing their already shaky security of ongoing employment. Not only that, the wearing of the once ubiquitous artist’s Hawaiian shirt now also sends the message that you’re pretentiously old-school, not technologically up-to-date in this 3D world and that your hey day has long past.
I have an additional thought about the clothes we choose - and choose not to - wear. At Halloween there’s no doubt that the costume chosen says much about a person. So does NOT choosing to wear a costume. People like to be individual but generally only as a group. Casual Friday is only acceptable if all participate and you only want to dress up for Halloween if all your friends and/or co-workers are doing the same. Going against convention to show your individuality isn’t good enough either and easily backfires to be viewed as laziness (if you don’t get involved when others do) or as a sadly exposed insecurity with oneself and/or immature attention-seeking (if you strive to be different).
Rather than risk getting pigeon-holed for one extreme or the other sometimes uniforms can be relied on to take away this exhausting daily guess-work and instead let the worker (or student) concentrate on the task at hand.
There was a survey taken among all the schools in the state when I was in senior highschool (in Australia). The question was: do you think students should wear a uniform or be allowed to wear whatever they want? Surprisingly, students all over the state voted overwhelmingly - to the tune of over 80% - in favor of uniforms. With my own wardrobe being rather sparse and my pocket book rather empty, this came as a huge relief. Yet individuality was expressed in much smaller ways not immediately apparent and despite the overwhelming sea of teal and dark blue on campus it was impossible not to see the individuals among them.
I think the more casual approach to dress in the workplace these days has rendered some of that creativity and individual expressiveness numb. I saw more uniqueness in the uniformed classrooms then than I see now in the casual shirt and pants wearing environment people seem to favor today.
But I don’t think this is the fault of the lax dress code. Instead I think the lax dress code is a result of the dwindling individualism in representing oneself in society. Where once the most affluent individuals wore outrageous and one-off attire now in order to show they weren’t part of the herd the dress-code now leans strongly toward the creams and beige. It may be hard to keep clean but there’s nothing very special about being able to coordinate ‘ecru’ and ‘bone’.
From avid t-shirt wearers to beige pant suits, it seems we’ve just traded in one cookie-cutter for another; one poorer in many respects. The resulting confusion becomes even more apparent when it comes time to dress ‘properly’ for a special situation: rather than pull out a costume that fits us well, we awkwardly borrow from traditions we no longer uphold, unable to be ourselves despite the uniqueness of our clothes.
The answer doesn’t appear straightforward or obvious except to reiterate the old standby ‘just be yourself’ - whatever that means.
Now where’s my monkey suit?
June 19th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
[...] Reason. And then picked it up again in that week’s feedback Episode 137: Feedback And Forth. Chris Lester picked up the response on his blog, and I’ve left comments on [...]