Posted on by rjonakait

Dress for Success??

“You can be better dressed when you own a lot of stuff.” Helen Gurley Brown.

The Senate recently changed its dress code. Many, appropriately considering the topic, got their undies all twisted. The Senate then reversed itself and reverted to the old code.

Apparently, the Senate has a formal dress code. Who knew? It must be written down somewhere, but most dress codes that affect almost all of us are the unwritten rules of good taste and proper decorum. These standards, however, change. We all could cite examples. For example, when I was a kid, men almost always wore a jacket and tie when attending church. Perhaps this was thought decorous because people believed that Jesus wore a Harris tweed or a flannel worsted with a tie and spit-polished brogues. Now, however, while few may wear robes and sandals to Sunday services, many men can worship without a jacket and tie.

Similarly, women in all sorts of settings can do their work satisfactorily while wearing pants when in the not so olden days they had to wear a dress or skirt. The spouse remembers her first “real” job in 1969. She was cold in the office and decided one day to wear her very nicest slacks. You’d think she had come to work naked. The president of the organization came by, looked her up and down, decided that it was okay, and silently left her alone. Revolution!

Back in the day, women showed cleavage in public only in the rarest of settings. Today peek-a-boobing is everywhere.

The notion of proper clothing changes, even in the Senate, apparently, except not this time. This Federal teapot tempest, however, has had me thinking about some dress code encounters.

I was not presented with guidelines on how to dress when I first started going to court a half-century ago, but somehow, we all knew robes were required for judges (although a famous federal judge did not wear them), suits with ties for men, and dresses for women. Indeed, I was ill at ease when the codefendant’s counsel at one of my first trials appeared wearing a fisherman’s sweater. I worried that the jury might see this as disrespectful with the disdain rubbing off on me and, more importantly, my client. (A judge back then said that when he was a prosecutor, he would never pick a man for the jury who appeared coatless because that person was showing disrespect to the criminal justice system.) I should not have been concerned. The co-counsel was a splendid attorney, and his client was acquitted. Mine got a hung jury.

There was an exception to the suit convention in court. When I started, some courtrooms were not air conditioned, and on the hottest days of a sweltering New York City summer, the judge often allowed male attorneys to take off their jackets. Prosecutors and defense counsel draped their coats on the backs of chairs. I did not. I wanted my clients to see me as a professional representing him and divorced from the courtroom crowd.

I always wore a suit while in court, except for one time. I had bought for other occasions a stylish double-breasted blue blazer that had cost more than anything I had ever bought before. The accepted accompaniment to this jacket then were gray pants, but I had bought fashion-forward taupe trousers to wear with the jacket. In my humble opinion, I looked great in this ensemble. I wore this to the office one day when I had no scheduled court appearances. That afternoon I got a call from a court clerk telling me a defendant had been brought in on an old warrant and that the judge wanted me to represent him. I felt uncomfortable going to court in my splendid attire. It wasn’t a proper suit after all. After the proceeding concluded, the judge called out my name and said that he wanted to talk with me. I was nervous when I went up to the bench. My anxiety increased when the judge said that he noticed what I was wearing. But he continued by saying that his tailor had been trying to get him to wear pants like mine when he wore a blazer and asked where I had bought them. Phew. Even so, I only wore suits when I had a court day, and my sense of decorum was upset years later when I volunteered in some public defenders’ offices around the country only to find that the lawyers regularly wore sports coats to court.

My mostly frequently encountered formal dress codes have been to play golf and tennis. My summer community has such rules. I quickly adapted to the golf code since I already owned appropriate shorts and shirts although they were bought at discount places, not the pro shop. However, tennis at one place was a bit more bothersome because that club harkened back to stuffier times and required all-white attire. I had to buy the whites and could not wear the same colorful shirts I wore on the links. But once I made the purchases, which were not overly expensive, I easily followed the dress code, even though my play was hardly of Wimbledon quality.

Of course, golf and tennis dress codes are a class thing, but even more so are the events that require black tie. (I never saw anyone in a business suit turned away from such formal occasions, but the many glances at the underdressed would have made some people at least a bit uncomfortable.) This was not a problem since I had a second-hand tux that I inherited from the spouse’s father. Later I expanded my formal attire by buying my very own tux at a deep discount. I haven’t been invited to a black-tie event in a long time, but I might have to turn it down if I got such an invitation. I find that where I store my formal clothes is a magic closet that simultaneously shrinks the waist and lengthens the legs. It’s a mystery how that can happen, although the spouse has theories to explain it. I don’t care to listen to them.

Restaurant dress codes, however, often irked me. I liked my suits and ties for which I had carefully shopped always seeking fashion and distinctiveness that I could afford. (You never would have caught me in those Brooks Brothers suits resembling a uniform. I guess many men feel most secure if their clothing looks like everyone else’s. And, I also avoided the clothier because I knew the Civil War connection between the emergence of “shoddy” and Brooks Brothers.  After wearing suits fifty or more hours a week, I wanted to wear something else when going out, but some “fine dining” establishments required “gentleman” to wear a coat and tie. When making a reservation, I would inquire about the dress code. I remember when a relative was visiting, and I thought it would be exciting for him to go to brunch at a restaurant in a fancy hotel that overlooked Central Park. The relative told me that he had not brought a traditional coat and tie and only had a leisure suit (remember that hideousness?) with him. The reservation manager told me that a coat and tie were required. I asked if the leisure suit would suffice. I could feel the icicles shot through the telephone wires into my ear as the manager, I assume wearing black tie, said, “There certainly will not be any leisure suits in my restaurant.” I never dined in that place with or without that relative.

Dress codes may have been irksome on occasion, but one time I got offended because of a dress code. Our kid was in a private school that followed the New York practice of giving the little darlings a week off from the rigors of second grade for the week of Presidents Day. The spouse and I, however, with our academic jobs, had to work this week. Furthermore, we did not have the money to go skiing in St. Moritz, Aspen, or even Stowe, or perhaps go to the beaches of the Bahamas or the like as the moneyed kids did with their parents. Instead, we opted for a meager substitute. I would take the kid cross-country skiing for a three-day weekend to some place within driving distance. Thus, one year we were off to an old resort lodge that seemed to be gasping for its last breath in a world of jets. But the place had extensive grounds and promised our skiing.

The weekend, except for one thing, was a bust. The resort may have advertised cross-country skiing, but the weather was in the 50s. When it was not drizzling, fog came in. There was no snow. I tried many things to keep the kid occupied. We watched the movie Turner and Hooch, which the resort was showing. The kid hated it (drooly dog was disgusting), and we left. We went to the ice skating rink, where I was uncomfortable when a divorced woman, with a largely neglected daughter, tried to pick me up. And my kid, I found, hated ice skating. We went bowling. The kid was afraid that a finger would detach in the bowling ball. We did go on a hayride and an outdoor cookout, which the kid found acceptable.

In hindsight, there was one blessing. I had seen an ad in The New Yorker for homes being built in a nearby resort community. We went there to fill up an hour or two. I liked the homes and the feel of the place. I told the spouse that it might be a place to spend some time in the summer. We rented there that following summer, and that community has been our summer home now for over thirty years.

And then there was the lodge’s restaurant. The resort was expensive for our budget, but it included meals. I counted on not spending on food elsewhere. Because it advertised outdoor winter activities, including, of course that absent skiing, I had packed only for all that winter fun. However, when I got to the dining room for the first evening, a figurative bar came down across the threshold. I needed to wear a coat and tie. I had on hiking boots, a green corduroy shirt, and jeans, which I had thought appropriate for the winter fun. A staff member looked me up and down, went to a closet, and pulled out a jacket that was several sizes too large, and a tie I don’t remember, but I know that it did not knot well under the collar of my green corduroy shirt also packed for winter fun. The jacket was of a polyester fabric that I had never worn before. It was brown, a very unattractive brown. When I threw it on the bed, it made a pile that I thought the large, slobbering dog Hooch could have left on the pavement. Yes, people stared as we headed for our table, perhaps because we were a mixed race family at a time when many people had not seen one like us, but I am also certain that my attire offended them.

When the time came to leave, I left the coat and tie in our room figuring that the staff would return them to the closet of punishment for those unfortunates like me who came unprepared. Then a week later, a package arrived at home. It was from the resort. I opened it and saw the jacket with a note that I must have left it behind. I was offended that anyone might think I would own such a poopish-colored polyester jacket. I thought I was doing a favor to some other customer by not returning it, so I threw it in the trash.

We have all encountered dress codes, whether formal or established by convention. And we all know that dress codes change. They aren’t now what they were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. I expect that they will be different, maybe even in the Senate, some day. In spite of such history, there will always be people who will object to changes and say that we have to uphold “standards.” When I hear that I think back to what I have read about the Rainbow Room, the art deco masterpiece sitting atop one of the buildings of Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. When it opened, it had high standards. It required white tie for gentlemen. But the Rainbow Room could not maintain that standard, and soon found itself admitting men wearing black tie.

Posted on by rjonakait

Culture Wars

The scope and intensity of our present culture wars may seem unprecedented, but there have also been discussions of how today’s turbulences compare with those of 1968. I understand the urge to do that, but the earlier time is often brought up in a nonsensical, competitive way—was 1968 worse than today? I, too, have indulged in such discussions, but what is the point of old folks telling younger ones that it was worse or better a half century ago? The words of Alexander Pope should come to mind: “Some old men by continually praising the time of their youth would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.”

On the other hand, we should examine the past to learn from it. The adage that unless we learn from history, we are condemned to repeat it is, of course, false. History is not a cycle or circle. It is a continuum. Today was not created this morning; the world did not begin with the sunrise.  The seeds of the present were planted in the past, and an understanding of history helps us understand today. Certainly, many of the present battle zones are just further representations of themes of our history.

One fierce area of contention today is over sexuality. The battle may seem narrow concentrating on the transgender and same sex relationships, but U.S. history is replete with attempts to control sexuality. We have had laws that made fornication, adultery, and sodomy criminal. We have had laws restricting birth control. We have had dress codes, which, of course, were also aimed at restricting sexuality. We have had battles over sex education. And, I am sure, that you can think of other examples that were aimed at sexual impulses and identities. It may be the land of the free, but it has also been the land where some have always wanted to impose their sexual views on others.

Issues about race today may seem to center on the often-undefined Critical Race Theory, but one needs only a little familiarity with our national background to know that issues of race were with us when the country was founded and have been a central focus throughout our history. Pick any historical era, and you will find that concern about race was a driver of what was happening. The Civil War was about race, but only because of what happened before. The Civil Rights Era was about race, but only because of what happened before. The effort to stem Critical Race Theory is about race, but only because of what happened before.

Race has also been a component of immigration battles throughout our history. Our first naturalization law, — in effect for over a century — allowed only whites to be naturalized. This led to tortured Supreme Court decisions as to whether a Syrian or a Sikh was white. Our laws at one time banned Chinese workers from the country (and states forbade Asians from owning property.) Our restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s came in response to waves of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and others from Southern Europe because these people were not seen as really white (leading to the oft-repeated, only half-joking question, Are Italians white?)

The concern over immigrants, however, is also part of another theme of our history, an American concern and fear about the foreign “other.” From the country’s inception, there were strong anti-Irish sentiments that intensified after England’s heartless responses to the potato famine brought waves of Irish immigrants. As Catholics, they could not be American, or so thought many, under the theory that they owed allegiance to a foreign potentate, the Pope.

After the Civil War, the fear of the foreign other shifted. With accelerating industrialization came increased labor strife. Instead of examining the complaints about corporate or monopolistic practices, the owners and government officials dismissed labor leaders as foreign-born or under the sway of the foreign, un-American ideology of anarchism. The country saw something similar as it countered opposition to World War I. Fear of “foreign” ideologies intensified after World War II. Reformers of all sorts were labeled as communists or socialists. These were “foreign” ideas, after all, and those advocating for changes they thought could produce a better society must be under the influence of Russia and, later, China. Adopting a more current term, these reformers needed to be “cancelled.” 

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union came the realization that there was no meaningful foreign-inspired radical movement in the country. For the first time in well over a century we did not have a foreign “other” to fuel cries for patriotic Americanism. But then 9/11 came to ramp it up again, this time focusing on Moslems. The current immigration fears of Mexican rapists, immigrant welfare recipients, and Venezuelan communists have their historical roots in a long, unsavory American history.

We have more positive themes in our history and society, but sex, race, and the foreign “other” have been dominant ones that continue in all sorts of ways. Conservatives still respond to proposals for government actions with the cry of socialism because socialism, somehow, always smacks of the foreign. That, of course, is not new. Medicare and polio vaccinations were called socialism. The environmentalist Rachel Carson was said to be inspired by the communists. Martin Luther King was following Russian orders. And now Critical Race Theory is dismissed as stemming from Marxism, even though I am quite sure that Karl, Engels, Lenin, and even Trotsky never considered CRT. Instead of debating the merits of its message, we seek to undermine it by implying that it is foreign-inspired. While these forces within of our history persist, a theme of our early history seems to have been lost. Our founding era was a product of the Enlightenment. This period was not characterized by a rigid philosophical notion or ideology. Instead, it was a way of thinking that encouraged an examination of the world with skepticism but with confidence in reason, study, and observation. Such contemplation and study was to lead to a better understanding of history, nature, and society with the core belief that things could be improved. This should be the primary goal of education, but such Enlightenment thinking seems to have abandoned us.