Mortar Boards and Blue Jeans
(yes, two posts in one day. But I am traveling next week, so if you like, you can stop reading now and reopen this next week to keep the basic rhythm)
This post dropped into my inbox last night surrounded by a bodyguard of outrage. How dare academics not well…wear stuffy tweed jackets with leather patches on the shoulder, I think.
Reading this article, I longed for the introduction of a sarcasm font, just so I could tell for sure whether or not this guy was serious. But on the off chance he is, let’s take it at face value.
That being said, this article is a gold mine of quotable quotes. My personal favourite would probably have to be this corker:
“There is something about the combination of denim and tenure that is inherently preposterous.”
Now, let me set my own position forth before we dive in any deeper. Clothes matter. First impressions count, and some snappy sartorial choices can send some very choice messages in certain situations, especially when out in ‘public’ or making a new acquaintance.
As a feminist, I can also argue (with historical reference) that this can be taken to an extreme which is detrimental to all involved in what is essentially a split-second non-verbal exchange. Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism was the 1980s advertising bible, which advocated the importance of surveillance, and especially self-surveillance, to make a lasting impression. But woman had been grappling with the implications of looking and being looked at since at least WWII, and possibly even earlier.
It sucks and it shouldn’t, but looks matter. Social scientists test this all the time, with social experiments that discover that ‘pretty’ girls get served before plain ones, well-dressed people can haggle a better price than scruffy ones, grad students assign more positive values to pictures of attractively presented bodies than to less attractive ones.
But that’s the generality. Let’s get back to specifics, namely academics. Should a penchant for demin negate the possibility of tenure? Jensen’s article raises five categories he takes issue with, so let’s follow those and see where they lead.
I. The Childlike Professoriate
When I was a grad student (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), I had this one particular colleague. We could always tell when she was teaching and when she was working on her own research. On own research days, it was holy tracksuit pants and stretched-out woolly cardigans. On teaching days, it was three-piece suits, high heels and plenty of lipstick.
She was finishing off just as I was starting, and in the spirit of learning about this strange world I had found myself in, I asked her why. Her response stuck with me, in general gist if not the exact phrasing. She dressed to kill because she was only a few years older than the students she taught. The suit, the makeup, the heels, all helped her project an image of compentency that made it much easier for her to maintain authority in the classroom, and to be taken seriously as an educator.
Her comments about age certainly hit home (as someone who started teaching a class full of students I had been sitting next to as a fellow student only the semester before). But I wasn’t completely sold on the question of authority. I knew that I was no great expert. I didn’t want to be put on a pedestal and feted as an authority. I wanted the students only to acknowledge that I had already passed this way, and could help guide them through what was, for them, undiscovered country.
So whilst I can agree with Jensen’s point that the attitude a lecturer, professor, demonstrator or tutor projects can help set the tone for the class, I would argue that it is up to that professional to decide the nature of that tone. I like to keep my classes focused but not deadly serious. So yeah, I’ll wear jeans on teaching days, but not my band t-shirts[1]. If you see me in a tie, you know I’ve got a lecture.
An experiment I ran one semester had a far greater impact on the ‘seriousness’ level of the classroom. Following a throw-away comment from a senior lecturer I admired that ‘they lost all respect for us once they started calling us by our first name,’ I ran a paper where I addressed them by their surnames: ie.: Mr Smith, or Miss Jones. They found it a little confusing at first, since in all their other papers, they were Joe and Mary, and their teachers were Jim or Sue. Many actually came and asked “May we call you Erika, or is it Ms Pearson.”[2] Half the classes I gave permission to use my first name, half I insisted on the honorific.
The impact on the tone of the classes was dramatic. The bilateral honorific class (“Excuse me, Ms Pearson?” “Yes, Mr Smith?”) were reserved. There was no joking, little in the way of conversation, and we rarely diverged from the topic. However, they were more likely to use my scheduled office hours. The unilateral honorific class (“Excuse me, Erika?” “Yes, Mr Smith”) took a little while to get used to the honorific, but soon grew comfortable with it. They were more likely to joke and get sidetracked than the bilateral honorific class, but less likely than the usual classes where everyone was on an automatic first name basis. (I do wonder, though, how that would change if it was an across-the-board behaviour and not contained within a single, one-semester paper)
Statistically, compared to prior years, both classes gave equivalent ratings in the course surveys. So it didn’t affect their satisfaction of the course, only their attitude whilst in the course.
I know friends in law school where the standard across the board is the bilateral honorific. And, whilst given that such courses self-select for dedicated high achievers, the anecdotal evidence suggests that the honorific helps maintain “seriousness” and focus.
So my argument to point one? Keep the jeans, loose the automatic use of first names.
II. The Code
From Jensen’s article:
“Here’s a draft Uniform Uniform Code:
Faculty members shall, when on college grounds or on college business, dress in a way that would not embarrass their mothers, unless their mothers are under age 50 and are therefore likely to be immune to embarrassment from scruffy dressing, in which case faculty members shall dress in a way that would not embarrass my mother.”
My mother is in her fifties. Shall I forward this to her, Mr Jensen? Trust me, hell hath no fury like a redhead scorned, unless its the redheaded mother who taught the scorned redhead everything she knows :)
But in all seriousness, this point seems determined to drag academic dress standards kicking and screaming into the 1950s. What is “professional” for one discipline may be considered fusty for another, and outrageous for a third. I don’t think a uniform-uniform code works for a group as diverse, expressive, creative and critical as a bunch of academics. If we can be trusted with heavy fusion and Marxism, we can be trusted to be context-specific in our dress selections.
III. The Tie
Okay, I may be biased on this, as I am a regular tie wearer. But I think the times that a tie denoted ‘seriousness’ are long gone.
A floppy red rotating bow tie that spouts water may be going a little too far, though.
IV. Conceptual Difficulties
Jensen breaks this down into three categories, so we shall take a deep breath and follow him into the breach.
A. Geography
Can I get a ‘duh!’ here? Keeling over from heat stroke, or lecturing through chattering teeth rarely projects the image desired.
But geography alone will not sell me on a tweed jacket with patched elbows.
B. The Sex Question
Leaving aside the obvious pun (make it yourself if you feel so inclined), let’s pick this apart.
Jensen says that the Hart Principle should apply to women, and points to Wall Street as his exemplar. On behalf of professional women everywhere, let me blow a great big raspberry at Mr Jensen.
PPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!
There, that’s better. I feel justified at this digression into infantilism because this is the point where I am 99% sure Mr Jensen is, in the local parlance, taking the piss. Unless he really does believe Ms Toth’s Ms Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia is a true how-to manual.
Unfortunately, the cited rules (Avoid poufy sleeves, dress frumpily, and act like an old fart) are things I do as a matter of course, so I really cannot comment further.
C. Outside class
Intense comparative testing has proven that critical theory makes 10 times more sense when engaged with whilst wearing comfortable pajamas and fluffy slippers. So what I wear outside of teaching days is not open to discussion. Be grateful I’m wearing clothes at all and move on.
D. The Dissidents and the Tasteless
One of the important though currently much-maligned roles of the academic is to challenge existing dogma and ideology, to question why. If that question why includes “why should I wear six inch heels that give me scholiosis just because I’m dealing with a roomful of first years?” then I consider that a valid and important social critique.
V. Political Over- and Undertones
And finally, at the tail of the article, we come to one phrase that I agree with, sarcastic or not:
“[t]eaching is, after all, a performance art.”
It is a performance; it is our stage, upon which we strut and play the lines we are in the process of constantly rewriting. Jensen argues we should dress to Code so that students speculate about the lines, not the performance. I argue that the performance is part of the formation of the lines, and I should be free to control that performance in all ways. Including what it looks like.
[1] It should be noted at this point that one institution, which shall remain nameless, enforced a staff dress code that banned denim. I can honestly say it made little difference to the tone of the class.
[2] This was back in the bad old days before the doctorate was finished, where I was bored enough to try stuff like this :)
