Dress For Success — or “Whatever”

Sadly, amid the welcome liberalization of thought and the easing of social restrictions that we underwent in the 60’s, the dress code baby went out with the bathwater. We go from the Kennedy style of American chic to Jimmy Carter, who seemed to want to portray the folksy style of Mr. Rogers, the kids’ TV host. Carter wore a cardigan sweater when he spoke to us about the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the Gasoline Shortage Crisis. The effect of this was to give Americans the idea that we were actually having a Presidential Crisis. The peanut farmer who looked like one, no matter how brilliant and how enlightened, could not lead us. No wonder he got such bad marks as a statesman. 

Some of us were stuck in the middle somewhere. We believed in the Civil Rights movement. We thought the war in Southeast Asia was wrong. We believed that a lot of American traditions were oppressive and stupid. But we thought people should be nice to one another, that is, have good manners, and after all, dressing well was just good manners, wasn’t it? Unfortunately, all traditions were guilty by association.

We have always tried to teach our kids etiquette. It seems that these mostly involve table manners, and probably that is because in the overly busy, chase-your-tail world we have made for ourselves, Sunday dinner is the only time we actually get to observe our children’s behavior. Like correcting their grammar, it is an involuntary response. “Don’t use your fingers!” “She and I! Not ‘her and I’!”  We are careful to instill in them the kind of manners that we learned growing up. Jenny’s mom is from Australia, where the British traditions are even more deeply ingrained, so it’s easier for her even than for me to spot the occasional lack of manners, the social peccadillo. “Look them straight in the eye and shake their hand firmly, like you mean it. Say, ‘Nice to meet you, sir.’ Or, It’s a pleasure, Ma’am.’” “When one of their parents or any adult comes into the room you’re to stand up. It shows respect.”

But honestly I despair. It’s a losing battle. Most of the kids our kids hang out with and bring to our home have terrible manners. They come from lovely families, like us, they live in an affluent, supposedly sophisticated suburban community, and they are very nice kids. But to say that most kids today are socially inept is actually an overstatement. I’m not beating any drum here; just stating the fact.  Address them (“Hello there, Timmy,”) and you might get, from under the baseball cap, a nod or a “Hunh.”  But the kid won’t even take his eyes off the video screen or his hands off of the controller, let alone stand up and say hello. Even the girls aren’t convinced that good manners are important. They’re cute and dressed in up-to-the-minute style, but they giggle and avert their eyes when an adult tries to engage their attention. Trying to refrain from telling someone else’s kid not to push his food onto his fork with his fingers makes me feel like Peter Sellers’ in “Dr. Strangelove,” trying to stifle the “Heil Hitler” salute.

 So what? Maybe it’s like religion. The believer needs no proof; and the skeptic won’t accept any. But my opinion is a culture creates traditional manners and modes of behavior in order to establish a sense of belonging. Rather than living as a world of unrelated, isolated and unique individuals, our manners make our society. We are part of a tribe that has these rituals of behavior. We belong. We are a part of something. We have a sense of who we are in the vastness of the universe, in the insecurity of limitless space and time, limitless anonymity of a billion other humans. I know I am someone. I have this definition.

This is the bath water that went out with the baby. Somehow we threw out civility in clearing the way for Civil Rights.

Habits – the word itself signifies both dress and behavior – and modes of dress are the same as manners. Otherwise we’re just covering ourselves, sheltering our bodies from the elements. The way we dress makes a statement about how we proclaim our identity, and about how we care about others. I dress to show what I think about myself and to demonstrate what I think about you. I clothe myself to look good out of respect, not false pride. The defendant, for example, wears a suit and tie to court out of respect for the judge and jury, not to demonstrate that crime pays so well.

Why a guy wears a baseball cap in a restaurant is anybody’s guess.