Q: Ladies, has your dress changed over the past few years? I'm 50, and I've noticed younger female faculty dress far more casually than in the past. Does it change how students perceive us? Does it change how administrators perceive us? My university is still pretty traditional, and too many of our new female faculty look like sloppy grad students. I want to tell them to be sharper with their choices, but don't want to be an old fogy (fogette?) Is there any way I can help my sisters?
In my past job I was quite literally required to wear a three piece suit to work every single day as a faculty member.
ReplyDeleteIn my new job, I suspect that I am one of those sloppy grad students type faculty members that you speak of.
The fact is, I'm tired of dressing up. I don't like what it does to my relationship with my students, especially at my age. I had them assume I choose to dress that way (even though all their teachers did) because I "didn't know better" as if it were still high school and I was a major dork. It's hard to do stuff like crawl under desks and fix the freaking projector again in a skirt. It's hard in my other classroom to crawl up on and stand on a table to fix the projector in a skirt too.
Nice shirt and jeans is my dress code here. My students seem to like it. I dress up when big time admin will be around. I got a great evaluation this year. What else do I need to say?
I have some of the highest student evals in the department, more publications than I need, and a good service record. If anybody doesn't respect me for wearing jeans while doing so they can freaking bite me.
you go girl!
DeleteI second MLP. In my first job, I was paid a bloody $1K/month after taxes for tenure-track position (don't ask), and still wearing my grad school clothes. A colleague "advised" me that I looked too much like a student and should dress to distinguish myself from them. I reared back, looked her in the eye, and spat out, "When I am paid like a professional, I will dress like one." The issue never came up again.
ReplyDeleteYou don't know if these "sloppy" colleagues are staggering under huge student debt burdens or underwater houses, paid in pennies like I was, or simply not interested in looking middle aged yet. There is no dress code in most institutions of higher learning because the focus should be on the teaching and research missions, not on fashion.
So, my two cents is that you can help your sisters out by saying nothing.
"I want to tell them to be sharper with their [clothing] choices"?
ReplyDeleteReally? A dress code?
When I first started teaching, all of the students in my evening classes were 'way, 'way older than me--mostly retired Navy veterans. To get some kind of respect, I wore a sports coat and tie to every class. It worked. I don't need power clothes any more, so it's Levis every day. When the weather warms up, it's shorts.
Compared to most of my students, I've led a relatively sheltered life, but even from my position of priviledge, men in coats and ties have usually meant bad news. I don't know how I feel about women in business suits, but Frog and Toad nailed it: Help your sisters out by saying nothing.
Why are we picking on the ladies here?
ReplyDeleteI am not sure what you mean by "sloppy dresser" but I wear business casual clothing (separates; shirt, pants, fitted jacket) to work rather than dressing up like I'm going out to eat at a fancy place. On days when I'm conferencing in my office, I'll wear cargo pants with my All-Star Converse or Keds if the outfit calls for it, but most of all, I make sure I'm comfortable enough to feel like myself when teaching. I'm not inclined to wear a skirt and heels because my feet hurt and then all I'm focusing on is whether I'm flashing students when I sit down or when I can stop in my office to rest my feet, rather than on teaching.
I've actually noticed the opposite of what Melissa from Merced has noticed: my similarly-aged colleagues--in our 30s--(both male and female) are fashion plates: high heels, ensembles, suits/ties, and snazzy haircuts with rectangle-shaped glasses (whether they need them or not).
Uh, because that's what the question is.
DeleteYeah, I'm wondering why the question itself is limited to the ladies.
DeleteWhen I attended college, many of my best professors were the ones who either looked as if they'd just rolled out of bed and picked up their clothes off the floor or at least dressed casually. I had several good ones who were "classic proffie" style: jacket with patches, sweater of some type, and cords. I was always under the impression that we should judge faculty on the quality of their teaching rather than what they wore.
ReplyDeleteOnce I arrived at Large Urban Community College, I encountered the unspoken dress code for the first time. I saw the men wearing whatever they wanted. Some of my male colleagues wore clothes I would find too worn even for painting or changing oil in my car, but the women dressed like high school teachers on Fridays and like June Cleaver on every other day. I continued to dress as I always had: nice jeans or occasionally dress pants, sweaters or shells, and tennis shoes or comfortable flats. I was shocked when, on my first teaching evaluation, one of the Alpha Females wrote the following comment:
She was dressed very casually, so I was surprised to see that students respected her and paid close attention to what was going on in class. They seemed comfortable with her, and her class session was highly structured.
Today, as we get more and more like a company, I increasingly see polos, denim shirts, or sweaters with the college logo and department name on them across the college. Some departments mandate their employees wear these on set days. As the Alpha Females have retired, the unspoken dress code has relaxed somewhat, but I think my department will have to be mandated to buy the corporate swag before anyone is caught dead wearing it.
I wear "business casual"-tie but no jacket, and switch between new sneakers and boat shoes. That makes me one of the best dressed male proffies on campus. The women tend towards business attire.
ReplyDeleteI never get any dressier than business casual and have certainly taught in jeans and a t-shirt before. I'm frequently mistaken for a grad student and for someone much younger, but the vast majority of my students respect me because of my knowledge in the field and never comment on my clothing.
ReplyDeleteI have had some interesting discussions about how to dress to look older/differentiate yourself from grad students though with other young female faculty at conferences. Many are worried about being seen as very young and that students will equate this with inexperience.
You noticed this too! Yes, just about all the women at my university are dressing differently from how they used to dress. Now, they dress like this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID14650/images/Joan-Jett3.jpg
Don't laugh, she's over 50.
P.S. That's a joke, you know.
DeleteAs a TA, I've gotten dinged on my department (not student) evaluations for dressing "too casually"--when I used to wear jeans and a t-shirt on Fridays (because it was Friday). Most of the time I wear slacks and a nice shirt. On my non-teaching days, I wear jeans and a t-shirt even if I have to meet with a student for some reason. Those are my dissertation days; they can deal with me being comfortable.
ReplyDeleteWhen I started, I showed up in coat and tie every day. It wasn't a formal code, or even a casual suggestion from the chair, but just me needing to compensate for being much closer in age to my students than to most of my colleagues. It was also a clear visual cue for the students that I was in charge: my tie, my classroom.
ReplyDeleteNowadays I'm much more casual, mostly because I totally hate dressing up. Sure, sometimes you have to look the part if the board of governors rolls into town, but otherwise I slouch around in jeans and amusing tees a lot, and cargo pants and button-downs the rest of the time. The tie is gone, but in its place is a longstanding badass reputation.
Not saying this is better, worse, or different from any other choices that anyone else makes, but it worked for me, where I am. Of course, this question isn't about me, it's about new female faculty. To that question, all I can say is that I never really pay any attention to what anyone else wears, so I haven't a clue.
It also depends on the discipline, and subdiscipline. For some reason, all the biomed types (and anyone else that somehow collaborates with the medical/military-industrial-complex) wear business casual at a minimum, while all the environmental science (incl. ecology, physical geography, geology, chemistry, physics) types wear something suitable for a hike in the woods, while all the Germans, irrespective of discipline, are dressed immaculately and befitting the role of 'Herr/Frau Doktor Professor'. The older males of the env sci persuasion sometimes dress like and have facial hair like Red Green, with many being prime candidates to be included on the Prof or Hobo webpage.
ReplyDeleteAh, the age old coded message in the clothes...and I'm with MLP and F+T on this one.
ReplyDeleteMelissa, why do you care how your female colleagues dress? Since you asked, I'll ask one in return: WTF difference does it *really* make, at the end of the day? Are they effective teachers? Bully for them, if so! You may not be comfortable in what they're comfortable wearing; so what? As long as they're not showing up half (or mostly) naked, whatever they wear is their own goddamned business, and absolutely--let me be clear about this-- NONE OF YOURS.
FWIW, I teach most of the time in jeans, a battered pair of Doc Martens, and some sort of acceptable upper-body covering. I'm in the Humanities, where many of my colleagues are tattooed, pierced, and/or otherwise marked. Nobody cares.
Hear, hear.
DeleteMelissa adds:
ReplyDeleteI want to follow up by say that many of the young women I'm talking about are faculty members I mentor. I want them to reach T&P more easily, be taken more seriously by colleagues, and administrators, and I've heard first hand comments from male colleagues that would suggest none of this is happening.
When the Dean asks me, "Who was that grad student you brought to the orientation?" and it's a faculty member up for tenure, I consider that a problem. I've tried not to get in their way with professional dress, but I have to confess I'm a realist and I see it hurting them.
And of course it shouldn't matter, as some of you ask. But surely you know that it does to many people.
So your male colleagues are dickwads. This is probably not news. In these parts if she didn't get tenure and there was any hint that it was because of her clothes the university would get slapped with a lawsuit double-quick, and it would lose, too.
Delete"The silverback assholes in these parts think you shouldn't wear jeans to teach, and they're on your tenure committee" should be everything you need to say.
It's not just the silverback dickwads on the tenure committee. My brother, a dentist, has complained to me a number of times about professors who don't dress like professionals. He's put three daughters through grad school (two dentists, one biomedical engineer) so he has seen most of it.
DeleteTo Melissa,
ReplyDeleteIf that's the case then that's pretty much what you have to tell them. Rather than making it about THEIR dress, make it about the stupid admins who aren't likely to recognize them as instructors unless they dress a certain way. THEY really aren't doing anything wrong--the other folks are just rather rigid and set in their expectations.
It seems a case of "when administered by Romans, dress like one"?
ReplyDeleteI second MLP, but I still don't see a way around the possibility that someone isn't being paid enough to maintain a professional wardrobe (and here, since we had this conversation a year or so ago, Programming Patty will chime in about how you just have to suck it up and buy on credit). I had to buck my mentor on this one -- if they didn't want to give me tenure because of the clothes they weren't paying me enough to buy, I didn't want to work there. So I got a better job at a serious institution where we tenure on research, teaching, and service. In fact, if being denied tenure because you don't dress well enough is a problem for female faculty in particular, I think there's a nice fat gender equity lawsuit waiting for someone to pull together.
ReplyDeleteI should have read down this far, because I just said the same thing...
DeleteIf they are thin-ish female faculty, there are actually ways to get fairly cheap business separates at Old Navy, Maurice's, Vanity, Forever 21, and even Overstock.com. I did it for years. Many suit coats from those places run about $20 rather than $70-$300 (Overstock is the high end of those). Maurice's and Old Navy do carry some larger sizes but the others just don't.
ReplyDeleteEven so, it might also be worthwhile for everybody in the institution to work on stepping down the informal dress code if it is harming ANYBODY'S chances at tenure.
Thank the gods I work in an Art Department, where black denim jeans are formal wear. 'Oh, she's wearing the nice Converse today.'
ReplyDeleteI can see the logic behind junior colleagues dressing to impress until tenure. You have to deal with the way things are, not the way you wish they would be. And "the way things are" varies by department. The best way to dress before tenure, as for an interview, is so no one remembers how you dress.
ReplyDeleteBut then after tenure every faculty member owes it to themselves to dress exactly how they feel like dressing, keeping in mind that if it's distracting that this could be a problem. If a male prof comes in every day wearing a wife beater and thongs, that's a problem. If a female prof comes in every day showing huge amounts of cleavage and leg, that is also a problem.
But even then, it's that professor's problem, not the rest of the faculty's, or the administration's. If guys want to show the entire class their pit hair and gals want the entire class to see most of their tits, well, let your freak flag fly.