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Popular Culture Review
attracted more negative reactions. In the language of Black's “social structure of
right and wrong” (1995), I was more wrong. Without the tie, and then with more
casual shirts, I reduced that distance—and reduced incidence of concern. The
implication is that, for some outcomes, for some populations, or for some
faculty/student differences, faculty should not wear a necktie.^
Consequences and Conclusions
Even in professions where attire has been standardized to the point of
uniforms, empirical norms have changed. Medical professionals, for example,
have long been distinguished by their (typically white) lab coats, with
potentially important symbolic implications. However, their use is becoming
less common (Harnett, 2001), recently dropping from 70% (Farraj et al., 1991)
to 13% (Douse et al., 2004) of hospital-based physicians. And this may be with
beneficial effect: A comprehensive review of 31 studies on variation in
physician attire suggested that the traditional attire “may not have totally
salutary effects on patients’ comfort levels or their health parameters, and there
may be caveats to consider when one is about to don this symbolic attire”
(Brandt, 2003:1278). One caveat might simply be changing fashion—not merely
in what casual attire constitutes, but when it is appropriate. Even consumers at
restaurants were once expected to “dress up,” but that norm began to slip
decades ago (Nicosia et al., 1976:71). Casual dress is now more acceptable in
many settings. In the last decade, with an increase of “business casual” attire and
the influence of Silicon Valley successes, even corporate dress codes have
relaxed (Zielinksi, 2005). Another caveat might be that the “identity
ambivalence” of options such as blue jeans (Davis, 1989) may serve a utility in
the classroom, permitting faculty to hedge between the status difference needed
to maintain authority, and the behavioral problems which pronounced cultural
distance may encourage.
Whatever the situation, if there are to be dress codes, they should be based
on an intersection of empirical knowledge and desired outcomes. They should
not simply assert archaic norms, vague qualifiers such as “professional,” or
formality in any other sense. Faculty attire does matter, but perhaps not as in the
same ways or to the same degree that it does in other professions or even
disciplines. Indeed, to invoke the conventionality of other professions,
particularly corporate expectations such as neckties, is to attract the ire of many
who oppose corporate management systems and theories in an educational
context.
It may well be, as my experience has shown, that we could improve
environments for student learning if we could first learn how we should dress,
and that that may mean learning to dress less like “us” and more like “them.”
We are already becoming more distant from our students in many ways. Their
cultural diversity is increasing, and their interactions with us are augmented at a
distance through technological innovations ranging from email to learningmanagement systems. As the formality of attire lessens across so many settings.