I routed through stacks of old papers this morning without finding what I was looking for. (Yes, it is okay to end a sentence with a preposition.) The project wasn't a total waste of time, though; I found several things that entertained me and a few that made me think. And, this old essay that made me pat myself on the back for predicting where the corporate nonsense would take us.
Undress For Success – 1998
Can anyone explain how or why we allowed the ludicrous phrase dress for success to become an element of routine communication, even worse, and American tradition? Who honestly supports this notion that clothes control our destiny and that we can be successful only if we are clones? I can't understand why intelligent people forfeited their freedom of expression and individuality to a corporate idea that serves no purpose.
We wonder why children ignore our lessons about individuality and self-esteem and, instead, become preoccupied by what they are wearing. We wonder why they want to follow the crowd. We are horrified when we hear stories about one child hurting another to teal clothes. Maybe they believe that's their only shot at success. Where did they get such an idea? Then, instead of looking to solve the real problem, we inflict the same punishment on them that we have accepted for ourselves – they must forfeit their freedom and wear uniforms.
The first time I sat through the speech about how to dress for success, (and worse yet, how to dress for the position I wanted instead of the position I was in), I laughed. My response to that was that I could only be expected to dress for the position that matched my salary. It was unreasonable to expect me to go into debt to purchase clothes that I could not afford for a position and salary that I did not know I would have. What was even funnier to me was that if I had followed their suggestion to dress for the position I wanted, I would have gone to work every day in sweats, with no bra or shoes. I had high aspirations; I wanted to own the company or be independently wealthy and free of dress codes.
True to the rebel in me, I resisted the dress for success image as much as I could possibly get away with. I had enough confidence in my job performance and value to the company to know they would keep me, regardless of what I wore. I was determined to prove that. I went to work wearing little make-up, and slacks or casual skirts and blouses when my co-workers were in suits. My work didn't suffer, my evaluations remained top-level, and I was still respected by my co-workers. The clothes did not make a difference.
If forced to say that clothes ever make a difference for me, that difference would be that I might produce more when comfortable. And comfortable to me is not a suite, pantyhose, and high-heeled shoes, even though that might be comfortable to someone else. My point is that we should all be free to choose how we dress.
Some dress codes are not even logical. How much sense does it make to wear long sleeves and a jacket when it is 80 degrees outside? Why have we condoned dressing out of season and wasting utilities to alter indoor temperatures to the season we are inappropriately dressed for? Does that even suggest intelligent decision making?
As an adult, I have a hard time making sense of this so what must children be thinking? We tell them to stand up for what they believe, develop self-esteem, be individuals. We tell them that clothes don't make the person. We preach the evils of peer pressure. We tell them they can be whatever they want. But what they see are adults dressing out of season, in clothes that most would never choose if not required, just to please someone else, for no important reason. What we say and do should be the same.
Maybe we should change the messages we choose to follow, and maybe we should adhere to the true meaning of the messages we deliver to our children. We should set an example by standing up for what we believe in, developing our own self-esteem to a point where we don't have to be followers, or controlled by rules that make no sense.
Maybe we should just undress for success.
