Business Attire

I’m in a line of work where one can get away with at least some amount of eccentricity. I even think if it’s lacking people might say “oh, he’s not a real programmer.”

However, even I am subject to the vaguely defined rules of business etiquette. I’m not allowed to wear stuff that is inappropriate for an office environment. Correction: I’m not allowed to wear anything that is inappropriate for a male in an office environment. So in general short pants and open-toed shoes are verboten. It’s fine for a woman to wear a skirt, of course, and open shoes, and other stuff that helps with air circulation in the hot summer. At least I’m not forced to wear long sleeves all year or, even worse, a jacket.

But lest I sound like I’m whining about how difficult us males have it, I’m not. I don’t think this is a question of discrimination, it’s more of a stupid clinging to old values and practices. See, it used to be that conformity in men’s attire was all the rage. So there’d be an office (or party, or gathering, or whatever) full of identically-dressed men. The women all wore traditionally feminine clothing, skirts and dresses and what have you, but they varied, because their jobs basically were to be pleasant to look at. So women’s clothing was colourful, patterned, in all sorts of different cuts, and so on.

At some point* it became less acceptable for women to be entirely excluded from the business side of… well, business. And there was a trend of clothing that was basically men’s clothing, adapted to the sort of stuff that women are supposed to wear. This gave birth to the skirt-suit and regular suits cut for women. Also, it became okay for a woman to wear trousers to work if she wanted. Anyway, the restrictions on women’s clothing were loosened because this was seen as a step that would stop the pigeon-holing of the sex into low-skill eye candy. It’s not necessarily true that the skirt exists because of oppression but it is true that requiring women to wear only dress-type stuff is stupid. Now that the feminist movement has been around for a while and has gained legitimacy in the eyes of the people who make decisions (and now that many of those people are not men) any given person likely fears the repercussions of openly suggesting that women are supposed to only be in certain roles in business.

Thing is, there was never any major movement to change the way men dress at work. Obviously there’s never been any need for a “Men’s Liberation” movement or anything. Men certainly haven’t said “we want to be allowed to dress in women’s clothing at work because we want the same level of respect accorded women.” So there was never any real push to relax the restrictions on male business attire, except one: the “internet bubble”.

Perhaps one thing the dot-com boom did that was helpful was to legitimize the idea of a casual office environment. Once everyone in pre-boom brick-and-mortar companies got sort of used to the idea of a bunch of businessmen walking around in pantashorts and “Fuck la mode” t-shirts, it became less atrocious to show up wearing cargos instead of slacks. When every new company had chill rooms and oxygen bars and gyms, it became a lot more easy to accept the idea of an employee leaving his desk once a day to take a ten-minute walk around the block. This is all part of the apparent trend of businesses toward casualness.

Change, though, comes slowly. Especially in the business world. People are still inclined to institute requirements that hearken back to the strictly conservative outfits of victorian England. I never quite understood the logic behind figuring that it was better to do business with a guy in a tie. Meh.

The bottom line is that I’m not supposed to show up at work with my hairy knees and sweaty toes poking out everywhere. But I do anyway, because sometimes I just don’t feel like getting home and needing a bilge pump to get the sweat out of my clothing. I’d like HR to tell me I’m not supposed to wear open-toed shoes to work when all the women here do. I wonder if I’d actually have the guts to put up a stink.

I’m not bothering to put these in chronological order. If you’re interested in knowing when stuff happened, Google is your friend.