I've got a ten minute window so we'll see how much comes out. I'm back into the swing of school and that means my mind is once again contemplating the great thoughts of a contemplator (yes that sentence was on purpose).

While talking with a friend of mine today we were discussing the necessity of dress codes in the work place and also the freedom of stereotyping allowed in society due to said dress codes. This got me thinking about what it means to look "professional". People don't want to be served food by someone with piercings and companies don't want you to associate them with a receptionist covered in tattoos. I've long since stopped really questioning the right or wrongness of these actions since it all comes down to business. We hold the mighty dollar sacred in our capitalist society and justify some of our more egregious behaviors in the name of "business." In fact, we've excused ourselves with this for so long that we have stopped wondering if this is how "business" should be run.

If you said you don't want to be served your food by a black man or a Pakistani you would be called, rightfully, racist. If you said you don't want to see a waiter at a fine establishment spouting tattoos and piercings people would mumble understandingly. To some degree there is a difference in that you choose a tattoo or a piercing, but judging someone based on their appearance is still stereotyping. After all, what do you know about someone spouting tattoos or an eyebrow ring? What do those facial markers really tell you about the person?

But we are given the choice in our country of where to work. And so if choose to work for a company you choose to obey their dress code. If you don’t want to than you can choose to work elsewhere. This is all true. But we don’t allow racist shop owners to ask that their employees also be racist. So when an employers standards are ludicrous the government puts a stop to it. The question then becomes, are dress codes ludicrous or understandable? Does dress tell you something more about a person than that they know how to conform to standard strictures of society? I’m not sure that it does.

I’ve thought about this for most of the day now and I’m beginning to see how so many of our horrendous cultural behaviors, sexism, lookism, classism, have been driven from the popular discourse and forced into the refuge of the business world. Pretty people sell more so pretty people get hired more. It sucks, but that’s the way it is. But is that the way it should be? By allowing companies to enforce dress codes (speaking specifically of dress codes that have nothing to do with the job being done or inhibit said job) on their employees? Are we, as consumers, just perpetuating the stereotypes and more inhumane beliefs of our culture by continuously supporting this separation of people based on looks, dress, and actions?

I tell my students every semester that they will be judged on how they speak. I also dress “appropriately” for class and for job interviews. I understand the game; I conform. But what am I doing when I do so? I need a job, I don’t really, realistically that is, have the option of engaging in behavior that keeps me from employment. And, if I am forced to engage in specific behavior to achieve the means to support myself is it really a free choice how I dress and act?

This is still a thought process at work and I’m sure I will revisit it soon. In the meantime I offer this as food for thought. Is it really justification when it’s “just business”?