Dress Codes

Friends,

I am particularly passionate about this topic! So, buckle up ;)

As a core part of my current practice, I often get tapped by clients to help reimagine and rebuild operating policies and standards for the workplace. Sometimes this means conducting a deep dive on board by-laws, other times it’s wrestling with a lack of equity in health benefits, very often it’s double-checking personnel policies to point out where bias is baked in, but masquerading as “professionalism.”

Dress codes in U.S. workplaces continue to be a hot topic. Why? Because bodies continue to be a hot topic. Clothes, face, hair. Here in the U.S., we’re having a helluva time releasing our desire for control of other people’s bodies.

Who’s the “we” in this scenario?

• Seasoned leaders want to control what young workers wear.

• Men and women both have strong opinions about what other women should wear.

• Straight people seem shocked by what queer people want to wear.

• Christian workers get thrown off by what Jewish and Muslim colleagues wear.

• And don’t even get me started on shoes and hair…

I like/hate diving into the “dress code debate” because it is on one hand so complex, and on the other hand so simple.

For some adults, self-expression and self-worth feel intimately tied to clothing, hair, and a broad set of adornments (for example: make up, jewelry, body art, etc.)

For some adults, getting dressed in the morning is not something they spend any time thinking about, caring about, or worrying about.

See what I mean? It’s interesting because we have smart adults coming to work with radically diverging viewpoints on how much our outer presentation impacts our internal state.

This is a prime opportunity to practice the equity skill, “receive and believe.” No matter where you fall on the “I care a lot” to the “I don’t give a shit” spectrum on picking out your clothes in the morning, take a breath and practice imagining a reality that is wildly different than your own. Receive and believe.

- Receive someone’s approach to “dressing for their day” as real and true.

- Believe what it means to them (even if it feels hard to make sense of from your particular vantage point).

Now let’s layer on the co-occurring reality of identity + context.

In the U.S., the cultural norms many industries and organizations still follow today stem from the military and from manufacturing.

The Industrial Revolution, plus back-to-back World Wars, led to a boom of intensely physical, often dangerous, high stakes jobs. If you’re working on artillery, you’ve got to get that right. If you’re working on cars, you’ve got to get that right. People could die if you don’t. Understandably, there were uniforms, hair pulled back or cropped short so it didn’t get caught in machines and tight control over all sorts of appearance related things which stemmed from the prevalence of hygiene related illnesses that were ubiquitous when your living or working conditions included little clean water or sanitation.

What’s with the history lesson?

It’s important to name that our obsession with what other people wear to work and safety and national pride and a sense of unity and accomplishment have been tightly woven together.

One more critical reminder from our own nation’s history: slavery and forced assimilation. In trainings, our shorthand for communicating the project of racism is the intentional control of land, labor, the economy, and bodies of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color for the express purpose of ensuring that wealth and control got and stayed in the hands of those considered white.

It was not accidental. It was not whoopsie-daisy. From ship manifests to laws and court cases, the systematic dehumanization of Black and Indigenous people, in particular, to justify complete control and dominion (think Manifest Destiny doctrine) is well documented.

You might be thinking, “Trina, this is getting heavy. I thought we were here to talk about low rise jeans and neck tattoos!?”

Stick with me.

It is now 2024. I work with people who exclusively have office/computer jobs. “White collar” workers, “desk jobs,” “internet-based tasks.” Whatever you call this class of worker, it is worth reckoning with the vestigial impacts of centuries of control of other people’s bodies – bodies that are not your own.

Given the reality of the work that my clients do now – work like strategic thinking, high dollar fundraising, and program development and execution – it is wise to re-consider what we ask people to do and not do when it comes to their bodies at work.

I’ll cut to the chase and then share with you some tangible ways to disentangle and deal with our own byzantine thinking around dress codes and other perfectly capable adults.

Three overarching truths for office workers:

- Some workers are feeling tremendous pressure to assimilate and fit in:

Dressing “professionally” is thinly veiled code for dressing like how white cis gender people have decided to dress. Therefore, predictably, it’s BIPOC, LGBTQ+, femme, disabled, Muslim, Sikh, and low-income workers that are feeling the most stress and are getting the most feedback about how they should and shouldn’t dress. In symbolic and material ways, their jobs are on the line if they don’t dress more white, more cis, more Christian standard.

- Most of us are projecting – we want people to wear what we want to wear:

We believe, albeit wrongly, that if our colleagues wore what we wore they’d be successful like how we are – we operate like we’re doing folks a favor by teaching them to “tone down” their racial identity, ethnic identity, religious identity, sexuality, and gender identity at work. We claim we want diversity, but we also want folks in beige slacks and uncomfortable “dress shoes.”

- Given the nature of our actual 2024 desk jobs, what we wear has virtually nothing to do with our ability to perform our job duties to their highest levels of excellence:

We are not standing next to hulking machinery, we are not operating on patients, we are not needing to sanitize equipment before we use it. Let’s get real.

I am exactly as smart with sweatpants on, or a dress. I am just as strong a leader with make up on or off. And if my bra strap is pinching a nerve in my right shoulder so I take it off mid-day, you’ll live. I promise you will.

For many of us, working from home during COVID led to an understandable questioning in why we were doing what we were doing. Was it truly necessary? What were we learning about how we approached our jobs differently when we had a bit more wiggle room, some freedom, some time to re-assess?

Here are my suggestions for you after carefully reading more than 100 sets of personnel policies over the past few years:

1. Quit caring so much about what other people wear. Focus on what you feel good in and what supports you to do your best thinking and work.

2. Work to regularly recognize all the ways you’ve been conditioned to be judgmental about how other people choose to present themselves. If you can remember, where did you learn that from? Do you believe it now? If someone wears something you don’t like, you don’t have to stress because you’re not going to be forced to wear that. You do you. Notice if you’re conflating hairstyles, make up, and name brand vs. knock off with more or less ambitious, more or less smart, more or less capable.

3. Make peace with different bodies. Most of us have been force fed media that tells us that disabled bodies, fat bodies, gender non-conforming bodies, and dark-skinned bodies are less than. Racism + misogyny means that most adults report not feeling great about their outward appearance.

Be gentle. Be kind. Be understanding.

Bodies are different temperatures, hair is different textures, and human beings were not designed to be the same shape, size, or color. Narrow, singular, suffocating body ideals mess us all up. Let them go. Don’t hold yourself to impossible (and irrelevant standards), and don’t hold other people to them either.

I’d like to leave you with two brief stories.

The first story is from my young adulthood. In college, my first roommate, Laurel, made it a habit of getting up early and getting dressed up when she had a test or presentation day in one of her classes. When her alarm would go off, and she’d quietly click on her desk lamp to locate her shower shoes and cady, if I snuck one eye open and noticed it was still dark outside, I knew she was having a big day. If I had my wits about me, from under my covers I would try to mutter something supportive like, “You’ve got this – go kick ass” while also praying that I could still get back to sleep until my planned wake up time.

For Laurel, she had learned that what worked for her (at that time – no clue if she still does it) was putting on tights, and a skirt, and make up, and curling her hair, and putting on jewelry. Good for her. Truly, whatever works. She mentioned the extra time getting ready also meant she could review her flashcards a little longer and think through the material one last time.

Now you’ll need to remember that I went to college in Tacoma, Washington from 1999-2003. Seattle was the home of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. New piercings and tattoos felt as regular an occurrence as new haircuts amongst my classmates. I myself maxed out at 9 piercings and currently have 6 tattoos. In our day and age, our body adornments were not signs that we were in the navy, slutty, or particularly counter-cultural. We got into body art as one additional way of expressing ourselves.

Here’s what’s true – some students wore pajama pants to class, the rich adventure kids were decked out in head to toe Patagonia and NorthFace athleisure, and some kids “dressed up” because it was simply what made them feel their best from day to day. What I learned then and know now is that there is more than one way to present confidence, preparedness, and care.

The second story is from just last month. My laptop has been funky for awhile, but I was able to live with its little quirks until the tail end of last year. Summoning all of my patience (which is not a quality God imbued me with much of) I ended up at the Apple Store Genius Bar in-person 4 different times over approximately two weeks.

I’ll spare you the drama about technological advances which I cannot hope to understand. All you need know is the fix cost less than I thought but took longer than I thought. So, overall, a tolerable result.

Here is why I share my stressful trips to the mall. If you’ve been to an Apple Store lately, or ever, you’ll recognize that they have a uniform. It’s a tee shirt. It’s the same color. And it has a tiny Apple logo on the front.

Here’s what I love, at the store in Minnesota I went to, the technicians and salespeople, who have been trained to give you an impeccable customer experience, came in every shape in size. There were white haired Apple employees, and Apple employees I wasn’t sure were old enough to legally drink. There were Black, brown, and white Apple employees. There were Apple employees wearing masks and not. Wearing hijabs and not. Wearing tennis shoes, and not. My favorite two folks were the tattooed bald headed Apple employee wearing a kilt and combat boots. And the teeny tiny curly haired Apple employee sporting one of those Madonna microphones while doing a demonstration on how to use an iPhone. She was wearing a floor length flowy leopard print skirt.

The rule is, wear the t-shirt so folks know they can count on you for help. After that, do whatever the hell you want. Wear your hair in braids, twists, a turban, whatever. To have this job you are customer facing, mostly on your feet, and actively problem solving for hours at a time. Wear whatever you need in order to do that well.

Final reminders:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention cleavage, skin, and hair real quick.

- Some bodies have breasts. Some breasts create cleavage. You should employ adults who are committed and capable of keeping their hands, feet, and all other objects to themselves.

- All bodies have skin. Different people cover and expose different amounts to their own comfort level. You should employ adults who are committed and capable of keeping their hands, feet, and all other objects to themselves.

- Bodies grow (and don’t grow) an amazing array of hair types. There is no such thing as hair that is “professional” and “unprofessional.”

Different washing schedules, protective techniques, and grooming strategies make sense for different hair. If a colleague has hair different than yours, don’t worry about it. It will not impact how you do your job. You should employ adults who are committed and capable of keeping their hands, feet, and all other objects to themselves.

Do NOT fall for garbage arguments about safety and decorum. If you are worried about predatory behavior in your workplace, focus on the predators, not the bodies being targeted by predators.

Alright, this was a long one. Thank you for hanging in there.

My commitment to you, on this journey of 52 essays in 52 weeks, is that next week I will complete and share an essay about workplace check-in questions.

Yours,

P.S. Please go check out Dr. Fahamu Pecou’s incredible artwork, including his series “Crowns and Kings” and pant sagging and cultural movements

P.P.S. Also, I encourage you to go to YouTube and take 20 minutes to search for and watch videos about why “The Crown Act” was introduced as a way to combat racist hair discrimination in the U.S., and any number of short films about the history and cultural significance of Black hair and hairstyles