Do you have a consistent mode of dress? I do, and I’d bet most Gentle Readers do as well. Moreover, I’d bet that your mode, as does mine, arises from the sort of life you lead: what you must do during your typical day. I’d bet further that you seldom “dress up” in conventional terms.
Not everyone is happy about that:
Have you noticed how the United States is starting to look like a bus station at 2 a.m.? It’s like we’re all just one missed Greyhound away from being found face down on a plastic bench with a bag of Funyuns as a pillow. People don’t care anymore—about how they look, about how they act, about basic hygiene. We’re all just one pajama-wearing Walmart trip away from complete societal collapse.
Remember when people used to put in the effort to look good? You look at old photos of people in public from, like, the 1950s, and everyone’s dressed like they’re on their way to a job interview at NASA. The men are in suits, hats tilted just right, like they’re about to solve a mystery on a train. The women have their hair perfectly styled, lipstick on, clutching a purse like it contains the nation’s secrets. And that’s just to go grocery shopping!
Now? Oh, now we’re out here looking like we’re in the middle of a hostage negotiation with our closet. People are showing up to the airport in Crocs and pajama pants, like they’re expecting a four-hour delay at the gate and maybe an emotional support hamster to get them through it. You see a guy at the DMV wearing a tank top that says “I paused my game to be here,” and you’re like, “Yeah, I bet you did, buddy. I bet you did.”
Well? Does he have a point?
I greatly enjoy the sight of a nicely dressed woman, especially if she’s also attractive in her own right. Such a sight draws my eye. I’ll bet – geez, I’m making a lot of bets here – that it draws yours as well, be you male, female, or confused. But that doesn’t imply that I think every woman should dress that way at all times.
All of us, male or female, have lives to live. We have livings to earn and other things to do. Dressy clothing doesn’t fit our usual needs. Moreover, we don’t feel a need to dress up just because we’re leaving the house.
Back in the days just after World War II, it was indeed de rigueur for men who worked in office environments to wear suits. That was the white-collar dress code at most businesses. There was a comparable standard for women, though women’s suits were less a part of it than were men’s. But that was then. Note that it was also typical for an office worker to undertake no physical labors during 9-to-5 stint at the office.
There’s this as well: the shots from the Fifties and early Sixties the author of the above piece cites are from the streets of large cities. They’re predominantly shots of men going to or from work in white-collar office environments, plus some of the wives of such men. Think Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and you’ve got a pretty good profile of the sort of people in those photos.
That was never a representative sample of adult Americans. America was a majority blue-collar nation. Most adults worked in environments considerably less gentle toward one’s clothing than Jim Blandings’s advertising workplace.
Yes, things have changed. Yes, there are fewer blue-collar employees and more white-collar workers today. But the office and its demands on us have also changed. I speak from experience.
If you need to be able to move freely, or to undertake some dirty or dusty task, dressy clothing is an impediment. If you’re expected to put in a long workday – ten or twelve hours rather than the eight-hours-including-an-hour-lunch of the Blandings era – dressy clothing, which is usually confining clothing, will chafe and distract you. And of course, there’s the cost of dressy clothing, which limits how much of it you can own. Don’t forget the extra time, effort, and expenses for care and maintenance that dressy clothing imposes.
An accurate perspective on these things can be difficult to attain. Most younger people have little to no involvement with us old farts. (Those that do don’t listen attentively to us anyway.) But we remember, and what we remember is a considerable distance from what those black-and-white photos of city streets thronged by men in suits and women in dresses and heels suggest.
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I characterize my style of dress as, “aggressively casual.”
Author
I suppose mine would be “casually offensive.” 😉
I came to a decision today. I had a business meeting, and on the way home, I thought, it’s been a long time since I took the time to dress up, put on makeup, and try to look like I wasn’t a short step from going back to bed.
i decided that, starting tomorrow, I’m going to roll out of bed, clean up, and take the time to put on nice clothes.
Not necessarily dresses or suits, just big girl clothes. Makeup, accessories and all.
My day generally begins and ends in the backyard chisleing away at a chunk of rock. I dress the part. Recently I took my wife out for her birthday. We went to a capital “N” nice restaurant, so I put on slacks and a button shirt. I was amazed to find myself the best dressed man in the place. Guys were walking wearing shorts, flip flops, and their bellies hanging out from the bottom hem of a goofy ass printed T-shirt.
Worse than that, I can’t leave the house, or turn on Instagram without seeing women, from twos to (former) tens with their bodies, and even faces covered in hideous tattoos. Their frames are tagged up like a toilet stall in an inner city gas station. (I know. OK, Boomer…) Whatever beauty they once had is permanantly vandalized. This has the same effect on me as seeing an amputee, or a hideous birth defect: that gut drop followed by a vague wave of nausea. Put me in charge, and tattoo “artists” will be the first ones up against the firing squad wall.
What I really can’t figure out, is that I have never in my life seen a woman wear the same thing two days in a row. They wouldn’t be caught dead wearing yesterday’s earrings. Yet they gleefully cover their bodies with indelible graffiti.
JWM
This may help you figure it out. Wisdom and Antiwisdom.
The former is buried or maligned and the latter is perpetually found in all media, including our own when we deride it.
Mr. Porretto,
I suffer from this problem. I am a blue collar worker, though a business owner, and I wear the same thing day in and day out. My pants are always blue jeans. The difference is that I won’t wear jeans with holes for work, but will around the house and on weekends…which inevitably means wearing holy jeans to the store, etc.
On the other hand, I would suggest that you look for old images of hoboes and bums. I think that you will find that they typically are wearing buttoned-downed, collared shirts, cuffed woolen pants, a jacket that would be suitable (if not so worn) for dinner or church, and leather shoes that would pass for today’s dress shoes if they were polished. And you will find these men sleeping on park benches or in alleys wrapped in newspaper.
You might also look for pics of old-time prostitutes. You will find that they wear unsexy feminine attire, with coiffed hair and tasteful make-up.
Looking at the dregs of society from days-gone-by saddens me. They seem to be quite a bit more cultured than the way that even upper class people live today.
The truth of the matter is that in the vast majority of our “dining out” experience today, our utensils are waxed paper, cardboard, disposable cups, plastic straws, and paper napkins. In California today, you must request those items if you want them. Gone are the days of salad forks, (true) butter knives, spoons differentiated according to their use (tea, soup, etc.).
When we allowed ourselves to be convince that we need not respect others, we are likewise conformed to not respecting ourselves. This, in turn, opened the gates for others to likewise not respect us. And now, respect is never a factor, given nor taken, by any person or societal body, unless force is involved. (See cop’s ‘authoritah,’ bureaucrats demands, and ghetto gang banger’s short tempers.)
I wish our ‘elites’ were more interested in pushing etiquette and manners rather than porn, violence, and consumption. Perhaps if respect was tied to competence and comportment, rather than victimhood or pride, we’d get along better as a society.
I often think that I could do myself a big favor, and society a little one, if I took Mr. Rogers as an example. What if, when I got home from work, I changed my clothing? What if, when I prepared (or purchased) a meal, I ate it with proper table ware and cutlery, at a table with no TV or computer?
What if I no longer took others slovenly approach to life as an excuse to no longer put the effort in myself?