Healing America’s Narratives: Dress Code Dilemmas & Preserving Appearances

[Part of a series, this essay explores a recent, specific manifestation of America’s collective Shadow, as described in Healing America’s Narratives: the Feminine, the Masculine, & Our Collective National Shadow — available here]

These men are dressed appropriately. The guy who’s seated is four days out from a lung transplant in the photo — and currently 7-plus months out and doing well. He’s also a professional clown, a father, an engineer, a pilot, and a sailboat captain. The other three clowns are his friends.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent attempt to relax the dress code for the floor of the Senate first drew criticism, and then a resolution to end the relaxation — inevitably from his Republican opponents and also from many of his Democratic colleagues.

The unwritten dress code —“Senators have traditionally stuck to business casual clothing, meaning coats and ties for men and dresses and suits for women” — has evolved over the years. As NPR reports, “women weren’t allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor until 1993...the same year the first women’s restroom was built off the Senate floor.”

It wasn’t until 2017 in the House and 2019 in the Senate, that women were allowed to wear sleeveless dresses and open-toed shoes. Also in 2019, the House voted to permit religious headwear on the floor.

I write this fully aware of my own experiences with and opinions about dress codes, having attended Catholic elementary and high schools in the ’60s and ‘70s’ and having taught in Catholic high schools for 14 years — during which time I was expected to be an increasingly reluctant enforcer of the codes. I’m also aware of the usefulness certain dress codes have had in schools in which the code’s uniformity can both build community and soften the visibility of social and financial differences among students.

Virtually every news medium has criticized Schumer’s move (which he didn’t implement for his own benefit — he continues to wear a suit and tie). The opinions about the impact of wardrobe on humans and perceptions are voluminous. “The clothes make the man,” was a common bit of male-centric conventional wisdom when I was a kid. It was implicit that certain clothes make better men.

Utah’s Mitt Romney had this to say: “We want those who serve inside this room in this hall to show a level of dignity and respect, which is consistent with the sacrifice they made and with the beauty of the surroundings.”

You can explore more perspectives here.

All of that said, the country — and the planet — are falling apart. Prior to the dress code’s relaxation, the U.S. Congress was (and still is) effectively dysfunctional, not particularly dignified, and rarely worthy of respect as a branch of government. The jackets, ties, suits, and dresses didn’t and don’t seem to be doing any good. The current Congress is America’s version of well-dressed fiddlers in ancient Rome and musicians on the deck of the Titanic.

Oh. And.

Bill Clinton was wearing a suit (or part of one) in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell were all wearing suits or dresses when they lied about WMD in Iraq and started a war that they didn’t know how to end.

The Kennedy and Johnson administrations all wore suits as they escalated the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon was wearing a suit when he lied about bombing Cambodia (and other things).

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert was dressed up, if not completely, when she was removed from a theater for vaping, groping and being groped.

For centuries, every president and member of Congress who enforced or legislated the betrayal of Native Americans and/or the enslavement of Africans and African Americans wore a suit.

Donald Trump has worn a suit virtually every day of his adult life — including each day he was either a defendant or a plaintiff in his 4,000-plus lawsuits, whenever he groped a woman because he could, and when he incited the January 6, 2021 riot to overturn the 2020 election.

More examples exist, but you get the idea.

Dress codes create and allow for the appearance of (pick as many as apply) uniformity, respect, professionalism, competence, agreement, acquiescence, and… Add your own. Unfortunately, the most important words in that sentence are “the appearance of.”

It’s not that wardrobe is not important. It can be.

Given the choice, however, between dress-coded dysfunction, dishonesty, and degradation, and non-dress-coded integrity, respect, competence, and trans-partisanship, which would you choose?