March 11, 2022 • 26 mins
Why do we care so much about what people wear?
An etiquette adviser, a civil rights lawyer, and an Iranian activist walk into a podcast studio…
Think twice before dismissing fashion as frivolity. Dress codes are about power - and they’re sometimes contentious enough to incite anger, legal battles, and even violence.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wait, I'm not even sure if this is on. Hello,
hello blank If you can hear me, ah, excellent, Well
all right, then let's begin. This is deeply human. I'm
your host, Dessa, and today I have donned the complete
podcasters dress uniform, the petticoat, the bandelier, the two and
(00:23):
a half cornered hat, the broadsword, the garter belt, the
whole nine yards, well ten if you count the train.
The inquiry at hand, why do we care so much
about what other people wear? Now you might be thinking
I don't care what other people were, But imagine for
a moment that your sister shows up in a long
white dress to somebody else's wedding, or are your wedding,
(00:46):
Or that your first night with your new roommate reveals
that he sleeps in a softball uniform. Or let's say
I start telling the story of a friend who showed
up to divorce court in fishnets, a basketball jersey, and
a glowstick necklace. Wouldn't you lean in just a little
to find out what is going on with these people?
If I talked to a lot of my colleagues, let's say, well,
(01:08):
I know nothing about fashion, you know, to one of
the first things that they'll say to establish that they're
not wasting their time on stuff that's trivial or insignificant.
I don't agree with that at all. That is Professor
Richard Thompson, Ford, and he's an intellectual who cares quite
a bit about fashion, thank you very much. He professes
at Stanford Law School. But he was driven by his
(01:30):
sartorial interest to write a book called Dress Codes. How
the Laws of Fashion made history. When tailoring really began
to develop as a skill in Western Europe, what you
see is the re sculpting of the body in order
to present like a different type of body. The cinched waste,
the dramatic skirts, the big shoulders. All of the powerful
(01:53):
institutions in these societies are doing this, whether it's the
church or the state. And all of these things are
communicating in societies where most of the populations illiterate, so
the communication is done visually. It's as though early fashion
aimed to create the impression that rich and powerful people
(02:13):
were fundamentally different sorts of creatures. Like think of those
insane standing white collars that monarchs wore in their portraits.
Queen Elizabeth the first late that kind of thing imagine
putting one of those on for the first time. Uh,
I look like a freaking cobra and this is awesome. Okay,
(02:38):
no rule, only I am allowed to our cobra stuff. Well,
me and some of my friends. You had laws that
specified no one below the rank of a night of
the Garter may wear a certain type of silk or
a certain type of ermine, fur or tram and you
talk about, like how emotional the response to this stuff was.
(03:01):
In the very opening of your book, you talk about
like a fashion faux paw that has children screaming in
the streets, Women are feigning, dogs are freaking out. A
dude's arm is broken because another guy whore is still
cat right, Like we have feels on this One proclamation
declared that they would be guards posted at the gates
(03:24):
of the cities with a list of people according to
their social rank, to make sure that no one dressed
above their social condition. It's worth noting that we still
have fashion guards posted at some gates, like brawny bouncers
at swanky nightclubs serving side eye to your graphic t
(03:46):
and denying entry to anybody in athletic shoes. And dress
codes still function to distinguish social classes. Okay, we're pivoting
the microphone here to a woman named Liz Wise. She
works for de Brett's as an etiquet advisor. If, like me,
you are a lowly commoner, you may not be familiar
with the name to Brets. However, if you are a
(04:08):
member of British aristocracy, presumably listening to this podcast while
polishing your monocle, you will know it as an institution
that's been concerned with hereditary titles and minding manners since
seventeen sixty nine. Nowadays people can go to de Breads
for advice. Someone has been invited to a fancy function, say,
and they're not sure what would be appropriate to wear.
(04:30):
Liz and her colleagues swooped to the rescue. Like batman,
bat meant bat people for formal wear. I asked Liz
to run down the dress codes that her clients might encounter.
Absolutely most formal is white tie. Then there's black tie,
which is much more common. There's also morning dress, which
in the UK is the dress code for weddings primarily,
(04:54):
but also for events like Royal ast Scott naturally, and
then going down on the hard rocky there's lounge suits.
And then there's the most difficult one of all, I think,
which is smart casual. I'll note that Liz deals primarily
with UK dress codes. When I asked about business casual,
Liz suggested perhaps a lounge suit would be appropriate, and
(05:17):
I broke it her gently that in the US crocks
and board shorts might be closer to the mark. Formal
posh parties, however, have more exacting standards, and those standards
hit different depending on your gender. All the dress codes
for ben are very very prescriptive, all the formal ones.
(05:38):
They comprise a very sort of detailed breakdown of tailored
garments and what the shirt should be like, what the
tie should be like, what the buttons should be like,
what the cufflinks should be like. It's absolutely codified to
the nth degree. Scrolling through to bread social media accounts,
the level of detail on dudes suits is pretty nuts.
(06:00):
So tux shirts should be made of special Marcelic cotton
because it's super stiff and can hold a mess of starch.
Bow Ties should always be tied a little bit imperfectly
to prove their hand done, just like how very important
people smudge their signatures to prove its bend in real ink.
To state the obvious, these dress codes have a very
(06:22):
old fashioned idea of gender, and all sorts of people
can cut a sharp figure in a suit. Shout out
Genomone and oh n Lister from Gentleman Jack Total Fox.
But a lot of this stuff sounds like a needlessly
complicated Victorian costume party, relics of a long gone era
and an aristocratic worldview that has fallen away out of favor,
(06:43):
like our formal dress codes really doing much for us
these days. Historically there was an absolute assumption that everybody
had these clothes and they knew precisely went to wear them.
But of course, I think for a lot of people,
when they're presented with a very stiff formal invitation with
a dress code specified in this dad age, it can
(07:04):
be quite an oppressive thing, can't it, Because for an
awful lot of us we don't have a morning coach
or a tuxedo or whatever in our wardrobe. But I
do think you just have to interpret them as a
rather nice, kind of very intermittent aspirational thing. Sometimes it
is nice to just discard your everyday clothes and put
(07:27):
on something you would never normally wear. You're not pretending
to be somebody or not. It's just it is dressing
up and that's nice and now valued listener. A quick
personal aside. For most of my professional life, I've worked
as a gigging musician, something to fall back on if
(07:48):
the whole nerdy podcast doesn't pin up. As it happens,
I recently received an invitation to perform at a masquerade
gala fundraiser thing that specified black tie. My bandmate Abbe
and I weren't quite sure what that should entail, and so, now,
drunk on power, I'm going to rest the controls of
this podcast away from our dutiful producer, sorry Beth doors Locked,
(08:10):
and exploit this interview for my own shallow it. I
need some advice, so I'm showing Liz a potential outfit
to get an expert opinion. This is one of my
classic l b ds, my little black dresses. That would
be absolutely fine. Yeah, but is it in any universe
acceptable that I wear that with motorcycle boots. I'm gonna
(08:34):
show you the boots. Wait, let's just open your heart,
open your mind. The general recommendation would be that you'd
wear it with heels, maybe something a little less clunky.
I mean, in a way, the way a woman interprets
black tie is to do with their character and personality,
and if they can carry it off, maybe you can
(08:57):
wear the motorcycle boots because you're wearing a very very
nice little black dress. But you know it's not by
the book. Put it that way. So like, as long
as I ride a motorcycle into the event, secondhand dress
and rented to CARDI, We've got a plan. If you
have one golden rule, what would it be. You'll never
ever enjoy a social event if you're physically uncomfortable. So
(09:22):
you know, whatever you choose to wear, just just make
sure that it fits, that you can move around in it,
that you can sit down with it. I mean, that's
the absolute goal, really, that you can make your entrance,
you can look great, and then you can just forget
about it. I'm wearing the motorcycle book. Not all of
(09:48):
our choices about what to wear amount of simple decisions
of personal taste or comfort. Some fashion is policed by
like actual police. Back to Richard Our, Stanford law professor,
For instance, there are a lot of cities in the
United States where you know, sagging pants are outlawed. And
people are arrested and fined for wearing sagging pants. In
(10:13):
Fort Worth, Texas, the Public Transportation Authority banned writers who
wore low slung trousers with signs that said pull them
up or find another ride. Most of us, however, are
more likely to run into a dress code as part
of our job. In two thousand four, a U. S
Court upheld the firing of a bartender from a Reno
casino because she violated their rule that end i quote
(10:36):
lip color must be worn at all times, and other
employees have objected to mandatory high heels or a prohibition
on men wearing long hair sidebar. Yes, we know Reno
Casino sounds like a scene from a Danny DeVito feature.
So we still have rules like that, but they're being
enforced by the private sector more than the government. As
(10:57):
part of the research for his book, Richards sat down
to talk and listen to high school students, because kids
are actually often subject to some of the more intense
modern dress codes. Lots of credit card rules about you know,
the skirts gotta be no more than a credit cards
length away from the knee, their dress codes banning yoga pants.
(11:17):
And the thing is that in each of these instances,
whether or not the dress code is forced can depend
on the girl's body. Two girls could show up to
homeroom wearing the exact same outfit, but only one of
them gets hit with a dress code violation. The teachers
would even say, well, honey, she can get away with that.
But you've got a different pot, right. So it's all
(11:38):
about that and just and not distracting the boys. It's
up to you not to wear something that's going to
be distracting to man. I first ran into that particular
edict at about eight years old when I wore a
skirt to Sunday school. And if you're not a child
of the eighties or a tennis pro, a skirt is
a hybrid garment half skirt, half shorts into the sport
(12:01):
and contemporary to the crimping iron. So as soon as
I arrived to class and my sea green skirt, which
fell just above my knees, the religious instructor ejected me
from the room, sent me out to the playground and
called my dad. And when Dad showed up, I was
on a swing, not swinging. I got kicked out. I
told him. He took my hand, come on, kittle. We
(12:25):
went back into the building together. I hadn't ever heard
my dad angry on my behalf, and it was drilling.
The instructor explained that the dress code had been clearly communicated,
we don't allow young girls to wear skirts because if
young girls wear skirts, the older girls are tempted to
wear skirts, and if the older girls wear skirts, the
older boys will be tempted to sin against them. My
(12:49):
dad thought this argument was hot garbage, and his response
included the phrase sexual hangups. We left then my head
held I in escorted victory march to the car. As
girls get older, however, Richard describes a sort of catch
twenty two. You either risk being branded as a temptress
or you're not done up enough to be presentable. The
(13:11):
dress code for women doesn't always leave a safe place
to land in the middle. Richard says that was actually
the thing that surprised him most during the course of
his research. I'd say, yeah, it's function is to keep
women off bound. Its function isn't to make women modest,
or to make them sexy or pleasing. It's to make
it so that they could never get it right. A
(13:42):
dress codes aren't just about what's being worn, but who's
wearing it, gender, race, class Some of our most complicated
social dynamics are sewn right in. One thing that you know,
I found is that there's a lot more strict enforcement
in a lot of instances in poorer schools, in schools
that have heavily you know, black or Latino populations. On
(14:03):
the one hand, that's unfair because those kids are getting
sent home from school more often than you know, rich
white kids. On the other hand, you can see that
some of the school administrators are trying to make sure
that those kids know how to dress professionally and appropriately
so that they can get good jobs later. And so
it's not all malevolent. Some of it's kind of trying
(14:23):
to deal with the world as it is rather than
the world as it should be. But the idea that
kids from marginalized backgrounds can dress up to get ahead
is way too simple. Richard's book delves deep into the
long and complicated intersections of clothing and race relations. Richard
himself is black, and his dad actually trained as a tailor.
(14:44):
Alongside his college degree. People of color often learned a
backup trade in case racism thwarted their professional plans. Not
all that long ago, Black people in the US could
be penalized for dressing too well. After World War Two,
racist mo moobs would attack black servicemen wearing their service
dressed uniforms for being uppity. People were threatened by black
(15:08):
people wearing refined, in elegant clothing. They saw it as
an attack on white supremacy. They were angry that you
had black people who were dressed better than white people,
because that clothing communicated to everyone that the wearer deserved
respect and dignity. In the nineteen fifties and sixties, civil
rights protesters often wore their Sunday best two marches or
(15:30):
to lunch counter sit ins, where they could reasonably expect
to be met with every variety of indignity, if not violence,
police dogs, batons, and fire hoses. More recently, writers and
activists have critiqued that sort of protest dress code with
the term respectability politics. They argue that no one should
(15:50):
have to dress up to prove that they weren't humane
treatment and equal rights, and doing so amounts to a
concession to the mainstream oppressive culture. But Rich doesn't see
it that way at all. People are bringing their Sunday best.
That's not trying to ingratiate yourself with the power structure.
That's a statement of defiance. That's a statement of opposition.
(16:11):
It's a demand for dignity. I published a picture of
myself running in a beautiful street in London, filling the
wind in my hair. That is Massy Elena Jade. She's
(16:33):
actually she's the last person to need someone else to
introduce her. Okay, get hi, this is Massy. I'm from Iran.
I'm a journalist, I'm a campaigner, but mostly I'm a
troublemaker for my government. I'm a badass. Massey is also
something of an online phenom. She's got millions of followers,
(16:54):
and that photo she mentioned of her running in London
started a massive movement. And that shot, taken in two
thousand fourteen, Massey's wearing an orange jacket, jeans, a toothy smile,
and her long dark hairs like flipped up behind her,
still airborne as she descends from a bouncing step. When
she posted this photo, women back in Iran left heartsick comments.
(17:16):
They were envious of the freedom the Iranian government requires
women by law to wear. His job and just a
refresher here on terms. When I say he job, it
means that you have to cover your hair in all
your body. According to shah Yah Law and Chajury is
more strict version of his job, it means that sometimes
(17:40):
you have to cover your face as well. Touched by
the feedback she received, Massey posted an even more daring photo.
This one had been taken in Iran, where she had
removed her her job in direct defiance of the dress code.
This snapshot sparked a firestorm. Other women took similar potos
(18:00):
and sent them to Massey to share, and soon she
was buried in photographs. She uses these images to call
attention to the plight of women living under the Islamic
Republic of Iran. You've talked about the dress code as
the most visible symbol of oppression. Can you explain why
you think that it's so important to this government. Look,
(18:21):
I'm gonna just ask a simple question. When you go
to my beautiful country, Iran, how are you gonna understand
that this is Islamic country through us, through women? Because
we are the one that we carry the most visible
symbol of Islamic republic. So basically, when Islamics take over
(18:43):
the regime, the first thing that they do they write
their ideology on our bodies. Massey, We've been talking about
the compulsory hid job policies, but obviously there are women
who choose to wear the garment of their own volition. Right, Look,
I'm gonna actually make it clear that my dream is
(19:03):
to walk shoulder to shoulder with my mother, who wears
hitch ab in Iran, in in the West, without being
forced both of us to take it off or to
put it on. That's it. I mean, both of us
want to be our true soul. We don't want anyone
(19:25):
else to make decision over our own bodies. In Western countries,
women are sometimes harassed for wearing clothing that isn't secular enough,
and a lot of European nations have formally restricted women's
head coverings. A woman's agency is hemmed in on both
sides of this debate, given that so many fundamental freedoms
are restricted in Iran, like female vocalists can't sing a
(19:48):
solo for a mixed audience, married women can't obtain a
passport without their husband's permission. People sometimes ask Massey why
focus so much on the dress code part of it.
If you don't wear a job from the age of seven,
you won't be able to go to school. You won't
be able to go to university, you won't be able
to get any kind of like driving license, not at all.
(20:13):
If you say no to compose your job, you won't exist.
And that is why for US women, it's not about
small piece of cloud. It's like the Berlin Wall. You know,
when we are fighting against it, it means that we
want to turn this world down, then the rest will
get easier. For Massey, freedom of dress is very much
(20:35):
related to freedom of thought. When I live in a
country that the regime do not allow me to choose
what I put on my head, the same regime won't
allow me to control what's going on inside my head.
Massey now lives in the US. In interviews, she often
wears a white and yellow flower pinned above her left ear,
(20:58):
and she comes off as comfortable, self assured, but her
personal choices have had serious ramifications, even within her own family. Yes,
my mom wears his job, but my mom is a
woman who is not forcing other women to wear hedge job.
My sister is my sister like was forcing me and
(21:20):
other women to wear a hedge job because she was
educated by the system that you have to take other
women to have and by force, and she sees it.
Massey had to fight to reclaim her personal freedom, first
from her family, then from society and eventually from the
government and others have paid for it to the regime
(21:42):
actually went after my family arrested, my brother, intrigated, my
mother brought my sister on TV to disowned me publicly.
You know that shows that how they're scared of our revolution.
These women who send videos to me are going in
public protesting against the post to your job. They know
about the risk, they know that this is going to
(22:05):
be punishable by the regime. One of the women is
only twenty years old, Saba. She received twenty four years
prison sentence, more than her age. Another woman, Yos a man,
she's only twenty two years old and she received sixteen
years prison sentence. And I remember the day when I
heard that, I felt guilty. I was like, what I'm
(22:28):
gonna do, I'm gonna shut down this campaign. But what
happened immediately their mothers joined the campaign. Their mother has
actually made a video on saying that now we are
the voice of our daughters. And to me, these women
are like Rosa parks Off Iran what Rosa Parks did
(22:48):
is an example for us because now we are suffering
from gender apartheid. When Afghanistan fell to Taliban forces in
Massey started receiving images and videos from again women too,
bearing their hair or wearing white to protest mandatory dress
codes of the new regime. Women of Iran and Afghanistan
are the same. They don't want to be victims. They
(23:11):
became warriors. They are not waiting for someone to go
and save them. They want to save themselves. When you
wake up in the morning and you look in the
mirror and you get dressed, are you doing so with
an awareness or a solemnity or a gratitude because of
the life that you've lived before where you didn't have
(23:31):
the freedom to adorn your own body. That's such an
amazing question, and I'm going to be very honest with you. Um. Actually,
my husband is listening now. Every morning when I wake up,
when I see myself in the mirror, I say, oh,
my God, you have such a beautiful wife. Look at me.
I'm so beautiful. I grew up in the States relatively
(23:58):
free to dress as I liked and pursue a career
in music, But in my early days as a rapper.
I was so afraid of being accused of leveraging sex
appeal to get the job that I wore oversized men's
athletic wear on stage, like baggy hoodies, beat up sneakers,
and I didn't care much about fashion. A certain aloofness
about clothing was almost a way to signal I was
(24:20):
too busy being a serious artist. It's uh, it's sort
of like the humble brag of announcing, oh, I don't
have a TV. But fashion isn't something that you can
opt out of the way that you can dancing with
the stars. Even going naked would amount to a fashion statement.
Dress codes reinforce group membership, you know, like we're amish,
(24:40):
we're nurses, were straight edge, punks, were golfers. Clothing signals
or challenges our social identities and our status. It's powerful stuff. Man.
Fashion is important enough to society for governments around the
world to get involved. A few hundred years after Queen
Elizabeth the First proclaimed that per silk was for the
nobility alone, President Barack Obama asked young black men in
(25:04):
America to pull up their pants. We care about what
we wear and what others were because it's shorthand to
understand how we relate to one another. And if there's
one thing that remains endlessly, desperately fascinating to humans, it
is other humans. All right, Well, I change out of
my podcast finery Man Bandaliers is itchy. Richard was kind
(25:29):
enough to indulge me in a little lightning round on
his own personal style. Do you own crocs? Crocs? No? No?
What do you think about adults in onesies? No? No, nope,
unless it's Sean Connery and gold figure suits with tennis shoes. Yes,
but I don't think you mean that at all. Camouflage
(25:52):
in urban environments not for me and secretly not for
anyone else. Deeply Human is a BBC World Service in
American public media co production with I Heart Media, and
(26:14):
it's hosted by Mesa. Find me online at Dessa on
Instagram and Dessa Darling on Twitter. See you next cast.
(26:34):
A crowd of people can feel electric. Everybody plugged into
some shared circuit. Feelings are amplified, Voices rise together, body
movement sync up Next time on deeply Human. Why do
crowds move you
Wait, I'm not even sure if this is on. Hello,
hello blank If you can hear me, ah, excellent, Well
all right, then let's begin. This is deeply human. I'm
your host, Dessa, and today I have donned the complete
podcasters dress uniform, the petticoat, the bandelier, the two and
(00:23):
a half cornered hat, the broadsword, the garter belt, the
whole nine yards, well ten if you count the train.
The inquiry at hand, why do we care so much
about what other people wear? Now you might be thinking
I don't care what other people were, But imagine for
a moment that your sister shows up in a long
white dress to somebody else's wedding, or are your wedding,
(00:46):
Or that your first night with your new roommate reveals
that he sleeps in a softball uniform. Or let's say
I start telling the story of a friend who showed
up to divorce court in fishnets, a basketball jersey, and
a glowstick necklace. Wouldn't you lean in just a little
to find out what is going on with these people?
If I talked to a lot of my colleagues, let's say, well,
(01:08):
I know nothing about fashion, you know, to one of
the first things that they'll say to establish that they're
not wasting their time on stuff that's trivial or insignificant.
I don't agree with that at all. That is Professor
Richard Thompson, Ford, and he's an intellectual who cares quite
a bit about fashion, thank you very much. He professes
at Stanford Law School. But he was driven by his
(01:30):
sartorial interest to write a book called Dress Codes. How
the Laws of Fashion made history. When tailoring really began
to develop as a skill in Western Europe, what you
see is the re sculpting of the body in order
to present like a different type of body. The cinched waste,
the dramatic skirts, the big shoulders. All of the powerful
(01:53):
institutions in these societies are doing this, whether it's the
church or the state. And all of these things are
communicating in societies where most of the populations illiterate, so
the communication is done visually. It's as though early fashion
aimed to create the impression that rich and powerful people
(02:13):
were fundamentally different sorts of creatures. Like think of those
insane standing white collars that monarchs wore in their portraits.
Queen Elizabeth the first late that kind of thing imagine
putting one of those on for the first time. Uh,
I look like a freaking cobra and this is awesome. Okay,
(02:38):
no rule, only I am allowed to our cobra stuff. Well,
me and some of my friends. You had laws that
specified no one below the rank of a night of
the Garter may wear a certain type of silk or
a certain type of ermine, fur or tram and you
talk about, like how emotional the response to this stuff was.
(03:01):
In the very opening of your book, you talk about
like a fashion faux paw that has children screaming in
the streets, Women are feigning, dogs are freaking out. A
dude's arm is broken because another guy whore is still
cat right, Like we have feels on this One proclamation
declared that they would be guards posted at the gates
(03:24):
of the cities with a list of people according to
their social rank, to make sure that no one dressed
above their social condition. It's worth noting that we still
have fashion guards posted at some gates, like brawny bouncers
at swanky nightclubs serving side eye to your graphic t
(03:46):
and denying entry to anybody in athletic shoes. And dress
codes still function to distinguish social classes. Okay, we're pivoting
the microphone here to a woman named Liz Wise. She
works for de Brett's as an etiquet advisor. If, like me,
you are a lowly commoner, you may not be familiar
with the name to Brets. However, if you are a
(04:08):
member of British aristocracy, presumably listening to this podcast while
polishing your monocle, you will know it as an institution
that's been concerned with hereditary titles and minding manners since
seventeen sixty nine. Nowadays people can go to de Breads
for advice. Someone has been invited to a fancy function, say,
and they're not sure what would be appropriate to wear.
(04:30):
Liz and her colleagues swooped to the rescue. Like batman,
bat meant bat people for formal wear. I asked Liz
to run down the dress codes that her clients might encounter.
Absolutely most formal is white tie. Then there's black tie,
which is much more common. There's also morning dress, which
in the UK is the dress code for weddings primarily,
(04:54):
but also for events like Royal ast Scott naturally, and
then going down on the hard rocky there's lounge suits.
And then there's the most difficult one of all, I think,
which is smart casual. I'll note that Liz deals primarily
with UK dress codes. When I asked about business casual,
Liz suggested perhaps a lounge suit would be appropriate, and
(05:17):
I broke it her gently that in the US crocks
and board shorts might be closer to the mark. Formal
posh parties, however, have more exacting standards, and those standards
hit different depending on your gender. All the dress codes
for ben are very very prescriptive, all the formal ones.
(05:38):
They comprise a very sort of detailed breakdown of tailored
garments and what the shirt should be like, what the
tie should be like, what the buttons should be like,
what the cufflinks should be like. It's absolutely codified to
the nth degree. Scrolling through to bread social media accounts,
the level of detail on dudes suits is pretty nuts.
(06:00):
So tux shirts should be made of special Marcelic cotton
because it's super stiff and can hold a mess of starch.
Bow Ties should always be tied a little bit imperfectly
to prove their hand done, just like how very important
people smudge their signatures to prove its bend in real ink.
To state the obvious, these dress codes have a very
(06:22):
old fashioned idea of gender, and all sorts of people
can cut a sharp figure in a suit. Shout out
Genomone and oh n Lister from Gentleman Jack Total Fox.
But a lot of this stuff sounds like a needlessly
complicated Victorian costume party, relics of a long gone era
and an aristocratic worldview that has fallen away out of favor,
(06:43):
like our formal dress codes really doing much for us
these days. Historically there was an absolute assumption that everybody
had these clothes and they knew precisely went to wear them.
But of course, I think for a lot of people,
when they're presented with a very stiff formal invitation with
a dress code specified in this dad age, it can
(07:04):
be quite an oppressive thing, can't it, Because for an
awful lot of us we don't have a morning coach
or a tuxedo or whatever in our wardrobe. But I
do think you just have to interpret them as a
rather nice, kind of very intermittent aspirational thing. Sometimes it
is nice to just discard your everyday clothes and put
(07:27):
on something you would never normally wear. You're not pretending
to be somebody or not. It's just it is dressing
up and that's nice and now valued listener. A quick
personal aside. For most of my professional life, I've worked
as a gigging musician, something to fall back on if
(07:48):
the whole nerdy podcast doesn't pin up. As it happens,
I recently received an invitation to perform at a masquerade
gala fundraiser thing that specified black tie. My bandmate Abbe
and I weren't quite sure what that should entail, and so, now,
drunk on power, I'm going to rest the controls of
this podcast away from our dutiful producer, sorry Beth doors Locked,
(08:10):
and exploit this interview for my own shallow it. I
need some advice, so I'm showing Liz a potential outfit
to get an expert opinion. This is one of my
classic l b ds, my little black dresses. That would
be absolutely fine. Yeah, but is it in any universe
acceptable that I wear that with motorcycle boots. I'm gonna
(08:34):
show you the boots. Wait, let's just open your heart,
open your mind. The general recommendation would be that you'd
wear it with heels, maybe something a little less clunky.
I mean, in a way, the way a woman interprets
black tie is to do with their character and personality,
and if they can carry it off, maybe you can
(08:57):
wear the motorcycle boots because you're wearing a very very
nice little black dress. But you know it's not by
the book. Put it that way. So like, as long
as I ride a motorcycle into the event, secondhand dress
and rented to CARDI, We've got a plan. If you
have one golden rule, what would it be. You'll never
ever enjoy a social event if you're physically uncomfortable. So
(09:22):
you know, whatever you choose to wear, just just make
sure that it fits, that you can move around in it,
that you can sit down with it. I mean, that's
the absolute goal, really, that you can make your entrance,
you can look great, and then you can just forget
about it. I'm wearing the motorcycle book. Not all of
(09:48):
our choices about what to wear amount of simple decisions
of personal taste or comfort. Some fashion is policed by
like actual police. Back to Richard Our, Stanford law professor,
For instance, there are a lot of cities in the
United States where you know, sagging pants are outlawed. And
people are arrested and fined for wearing sagging pants. In
(10:13):
Fort Worth, Texas, the Public Transportation Authority banned writers who
wore low slung trousers with signs that said pull them
up or find another ride. Most of us, however, are
more likely to run into a dress code as part
of our job. In two thousand four, a U. S
Court upheld the firing of a bartender from a Reno
casino because she violated their rule that end i quote
(10:36):
lip color must be worn at all times, and other
employees have objected to mandatory high heels or a prohibition
on men wearing long hair sidebar. Yes, we know Reno
Casino sounds like a scene from a Danny DeVito feature.
So we still have rules like that, but they're being
enforced by the private sector more than the government. As
(10:57):
part of the research for his book, Richards sat down
to talk and listen to high school students, because kids
are actually often subject to some of the more intense
modern dress codes. Lots of credit card rules about you know,
the skirts gotta be no more than a credit cards
length away from the knee, their dress codes banning yoga pants.
(11:17):
And the thing is that in each of these instances,
whether or not the dress code is forced can depend
on the girl's body. Two girls could show up to
homeroom wearing the exact same outfit, but only one of
them gets hit with a dress code violation. The teachers
would even say, well, honey, she can get away with that.
But you've got a different pot, right. So it's all
(11:38):
about that and just and not distracting the boys. It's
up to you not to wear something that's going to
be distracting to man. I first ran into that particular
edict at about eight years old when I wore a
skirt to Sunday school. And if you're not a child
of the eighties or a tennis pro, a skirt is
a hybrid garment half skirt, half shorts into the sport
(12:01):
and contemporary to the crimping iron. So as soon as
I arrived to class and my sea green skirt, which
fell just above my knees, the religious instructor ejected me
from the room, sent me out to the playground and
called my dad. And when Dad showed up, I was
on a swing, not swinging. I got kicked out. I
told him. He took my hand, come on, kittle. We
(12:25):
went back into the building together. I hadn't ever heard
my dad angry on my behalf, and it was drilling.
The instructor explained that the dress code had been clearly communicated,
we don't allow young girls to wear skirts because if
young girls wear skirts, the older girls are tempted to
wear skirts, and if the older girls wear skirts, the
older boys will be tempted to sin against them. My
(12:49):
dad thought this argument was hot garbage, and his response
included the phrase sexual hangups. We left then my head
held I in escorted victory march to the car. As
girls get older, however, Richard describes a sort of catch
twenty two. You either risk being branded as a temptress
or you're not done up enough to be presentable. The
(13:11):
dress code for women doesn't always leave a safe place
to land in the middle. Richard says that was actually
the thing that surprised him most during the course of
his research. I'd say, yeah, it's function is to keep
women off bound. Its function isn't to make women modest,
or to make them sexy or pleasing. It's to make
it so that they could never get it right. A
(13:42):
dress codes aren't just about what's being worn, but who's
wearing it, gender, race, class Some of our most complicated
social dynamics are sewn right in. One thing that you know,
I found is that there's a lot more strict enforcement
in a lot of instances in poorer schools, in schools
that have heavily you know, black or Latino populations. On
(14:03):
the one hand, that's unfair because those kids are getting
sent home from school more often than you know, rich
white kids. On the other hand, you can see that
some of the school administrators are trying to make sure
that those kids know how to dress professionally and appropriately
so that they can get good jobs later. And so
it's not all malevolent. Some of it's kind of trying
(14:23):
to deal with the world as it is rather than
the world as it should be. But the idea that
kids from marginalized backgrounds can dress up to get ahead
is way too simple. Richard's book delves deep into the
long and complicated intersections of clothing and race relations. Richard
himself is black, and his dad actually trained as a tailor.
(14:44):
Alongside his college degree. People of color often learned a
backup trade in case racism thwarted their professional plans. Not
all that long ago, Black people in the US could
be penalized for dressing too well. After World War Two,
racist mo moobs would attack black servicemen wearing their service
dressed uniforms for being uppity. People were threatened by black
(15:08):
people wearing refined, in elegant clothing. They saw it as
an attack on white supremacy. They were angry that you
had black people who were dressed better than white people,
because that clothing communicated to everyone that the wearer deserved
respect and dignity. In the nineteen fifties and sixties, civil
rights protesters often wore their Sunday best two marches or
(15:30):
to lunch counter sit ins, where they could reasonably expect
to be met with every variety of indignity, if not violence,
police dogs, batons, and fire hoses. More recently, writers and
activists have critiqued that sort of protest dress code with
the term respectability politics. They argue that no one should
(15:50):
have to dress up to prove that they weren't humane
treatment and equal rights, and doing so amounts to a
concession to the mainstream oppressive culture. But Rich doesn't see
it that way at all. People are bringing their Sunday best.
That's not trying to ingratiate yourself with the power structure.
That's a statement of defiance. That's a statement of opposition.
(16:11):
It's a demand for dignity. I published a picture of
myself running in a beautiful street in London, filling the
wind in my hair. That is Massy Elena Jade. She's
(16:33):
actually she's the last person to need someone else to
introduce her. Okay, get hi, this is Massy. I'm from Iran.
I'm a journalist, I'm a campaigner, but mostly I'm a
troublemaker for my government. I'm a badass. Massey is also
something of an online phenom. She's got millions of followers,
(16:54):
and that photo she mentioned of her running in London
started a massive movement. And that shot, taken in two
thousand fourteen, Massey's wearing an orange jacket, jeans, a toothy smile,
and her long dark hairs like flipped up behind her,
still airborne as she descends from a bouncing step. When
she posted this photo, women back in Iran left heartsick comments.
(17:16):
They were envious of the freedom the Iranian government requires
women by law to wear. His job and just a
refresher here on terms. When I say he job, it
means that you have to cover your hair in all
your body. According to shah Yah Law and Chajury is
more strict version of his job, it means that sometimes
(17:40):
you have to cover your face as well. Touched by
the feedback she received, Massey posted an even more daring photo.
This one had been taken in Iran, where she had
removed her her job in direct defiance of the dress code.
This snapshot sparked a firestorm. Other women took similar potos
(18:00):
and sent them to Massey to share, and soon she
was buried in photographs. She uses these images to call
attention to the plight of women living under the Islamic
Republic of Iran. You've talked about the dress code as
the most visible symbol of oppression. Can you explain why
you think that it's so important to this government. Look,
(18:21):
I'm gonna just ask a simple question. When you go
to my beautiful country, Iran, how are you gonna understand
that this is Islamic country through us, through women? Because
we are the one that we carry the most visible
symbol of Islamic republic. So basically, when Islamics take over
(18:43):
the regime, the first thing that they do they write
their ideology on our bodies. Massey, We've been talking about
the compulsory hid job policies, but obviously there are women
who choose to wear the garment of their own volition. Right, Look,
I'm gonna actually make it clear that my dream is
(19:03):
to walk shoulder to shoulder with my mother, who wears
hitch ab in Iran, in in the West, without being
forced both of us to take it off or to
put it on. That's it. I mean, both of us
want to be our true soul. We don't want anyone
(19:25):
else to make decision over our own bodies. In Western countries,
women are sometimes harassed for wearing clothing that isn't secular enough,
and a lot of European nations have formally restricted women's
head coverings. A woman's agency is hemmed in on both
sides of this debate, given that so many fundamental freedoms
are restricted in Iran, like female vocalists can't sing a
(19:48):
solo for a mixed audience, married women can't obtain a
passport without their husband's permission. People sometimes ask Massey why
focus so much on the dress code part of it.
If you don't wear a job from the age of seven,
you won't be able to go to school. You won't
be able to go to university, you won't be able
to get any kind of like driving license, not at all.
(20:13):
If you say no to compose your job, you won't exist.
And that is why for US women, it's not about
small piece of cloud. It's like the Berlin Wall. You know,
when we are fighting against it, it means that we
want to turn this world down, then the rest will
get easier. For Massey, freedom of dress is very much
(20:35):
related to freedom of thought. When I live in a
country that the regime do not allow me to choose
what I put on my head, the same regime won't
allow me to control what's going on inside my head.
Massey now lives in the US. In interviews, she often
wears a white and yellow flower pinned above her left ear,
(20:58):
and she comes off as comfortable, self assured, but her
personal choices have had serious ramifications, even within her own family. Yes,
my mom wears his job, but my mom is a
woman who is not forcing other women to wear hedge job.
My sister is my sister like was forcing me and
(21:20):
other women to wear a hedge job because she was
educated by the system that you have to take other
women to have and by force, and she sees it.
Massey had to fight to reclaim her personal freedom, first
from her family, then from society and eventually from the
government and others have paid for it to the regime
(21:42):
actually went after my family arrested, my brother, intrigated, my
mother brought my sister on TV to disowned me publicly.
You know that shows that how they're scared of our revolution.
These women who send videos to me are going in
public protesting against the post to your job. They know
about the risk, they know that this is going to
(22:05):
be punishable by the regime. One of the women is
only twenty years old, Saba. She received twenty four years
prison sentence, more than her age. Another woman, Yos a man,
she's only twenty two years old and she received sixteen
years prison sentence. And I remember the day when I
heard that, I felt guilty. I was like, what I'm
(22:28):
gonna do, I'm gonna shut down this campaign. But what
happened immediately their mothers joined the campaign. Their mother has
actually made a video on saying that now we are
the voice of our daughters. And to me, these women
are like Rosa parks Off Iran what Rosa Parks did
(22:48):
is an example for us because now we are suffering
from gender apartheid. When Afghanistan fell to Taliban forces in
Massey started receiving images and videos from again women too,
bearing their hair or wearing white to protest mandatory dress
codes of the new regime. Women of Iran and Afghanistan
are the same. They don't want to be victims. They
(23:11):
became warriors. They are not waiting for someone to go
and save them. They want to save themselves. When you
wake up in the morning and you look in the
mirror and you get dressed, are you doing so with
an awareness or a solemnity or a gratitude because of
the life that you've lived before where you didn't have
(23:31):
the freedom to adorn your own body. That's such an
amazing question, and I'm going to be very honest with you. Um. Actually,
my husband is listening now. Every morning when I wake up,
when I see myself in the mirror, I say, oh,
my God, you have such a beautiful wife. Look at me.
I'm so beautiful. I grew up in the States relatively
(23:58):
free to dress as I liked and pursue a career
in music, But in my early days as a rapper.
I was so afraid of being accused of leveraging sex
appeal to get the job that I wore oversized men's
athletic wear on stage, like baggy hoodies, beat up sneakers,
and I didn't care much about fashion. A certain aloofness
about clothing was almost a way to signal I was
(24:20):
too busy being a serious artist. It's uh, it's sort
of like the humble brag of announcing, oh, I don't
have a TV. But fashion isn't something that you can
opt out of the way that you can dancing with
the stars. Even going naked would amount to a fashion statement.
Dress codes reinforce group membership, you know, like we're amish,
(24:40):
we're nurses, were straight edge, punks, were golfers. Clothing signals
or challenges our social identities and our status. It's powerful stuff. Man.
Fashion is important enough to society for governments around the
world to get involved. A few hundred years after Queen
Elizabeth the First proclaimed that per silk was for the
nobility alone, President Barack Obama asked young black men in
(25:04):
America to pull up their pants. We care about what
we wear and what others were because it's shorthand to
understand how we relate to one another. And if there's
one thing that remains endlessly, desperately fascinating to humans, it
is other humans. All right, Well, I change out of
my podcast finery Man Bandaliers is itchy. Richard was kind
(25:29):
enough to indulge me in a little lightning round on
his own personal style. Do you own crocs? Crocs? No? No?
What do you think about adults in onesies? No? No, nope,
unless it's Sean Connery and gold figure suits with tennis shoes. Yes,
but I don't think you mean that at all. Camouflage
(25:52):
in urban environments not for me and secretly not for
anyone else. Deeply Human is a BBC World Service in
American public media co production with I Heart Media, and
(26:14):
it's hosted by Mesa. Find me online at Dessa on
Instagram and Dessa Darling on Twitter. See you next cast.
(26:34):
A crowd of people can feel electric. Everybody plugged into
some shared circuit. Feelings are amplified, Voices rise together, body
movement sync up Next time on deeply Human. Why do
crowds move you
Popular Podcasts
1. Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.