As I put on my white shirt this morning, while getting ready for a job interview (in a sector that requires being dresses "professionally"), I felt an instant pang of discomfort.
Something in that white shirt was suffocating. I felt trapped inside a white carcass. A carcass that tries too hard to contain me. The rigid colar was framing my neck, as if holding it in a straight position. The aggressive lines of the garment, and its rigid material was concealing the fluidity and curves of my body, trying to transform it into a cube!
Things got worse for me once I arrived at the interview. The woman explained how it is of fundamental importance to have an impeccable appearance. "Impeccable"; that word just makes a chill run down my spine. We all are humans, we all have flaws. But no, in the world of bussiness it is crucial that you erase (or hide) these flaws. Here you have no right to be a human of flesh and bones. Here we have agreed to look "perfect" (God forbid you ever realize that you are dealing with a human!).
Of course after "impeccable", followed a whole other list about how we are expected to look (tied-back hair, subtle but still visible make-up for women, no beard and short hair for men etc) and behave like. No room for personality, no room for self-expression. I felt that we are expected to be a perfectly oiled piece of machinery in this job and not a human.
The above has not always been a problem for me. There was a time where I heartily believed in the necessity of all of this, and I might even have felt empowered behind this impersonal uniform. I would probably have called someone with the above reaction an oversensitive hippie or a problemseeker.
But today I do have the above reaction. I do find these kind of uniforms de-humanising and I believe that they can even inspire cruel behaviour. Cause your clothes say:
1) You wear our clothes, you wear our values. Your personal opinion doesn't matter: you have to conform.
2) It is not you who is acting. It is not even a human who is acting. You serve and express the company. You are a simple mechanical extention of the company (replace company with any other institution you wish to imagine, e.g. state, military).
So, am I oversensitive? Have I become a problemseeker? After that interview, a part of me wanted to rip of this white shirt, tear it into pieces and burn it in a public square. An other part of me told me to relax and let it go: it's just a piece of cloth.
Something in that white shirt was suffocating. I felt trapped inside a white carcass. A carcass that tries too hard to contain me. The rigid colar was framing my neck, as if holding it in a straight position. The aggressive lines of the garment, and its rigid material was concealing the fluidity and curves of my body, trying to transform it into a cube!
Things got worse for me once I arrived at the interview. The woman explained how it is of fundamental importance to have an impeccable appearance. "Impeccable"; that word just makes a chill run down my spine. We all are humans, we all have flaws. But no, in the world of bussiness it is crucial that you erase (or hide) these flaws. Here you have no right to be a human of flesh and bones. Here we have agreed to look "perfect" (God forbid you ever realize that you are dealing with a human!).
Of course after "impeccable", followed a whole other list about how we are expected to look (tied-back hair, subtle but still visible make-up for women, no beard and short hair for men etc) and behave like. No room for personality, no room for self-expression. I felt that we are expected to be a perfectly oiled piece of machinery in this job and not a human.
The above has not always been a problem for me. There was a time where I heartily believed in the necessity of all of this, and I might even have felt empowered behind this impersonal uniform. I would probably have called someone with the above reaction an oversensitive hippie or a problemseeker.
But today I do have the above reaction. I do find these kind of uniforms de-humanising and I believe that they can even inspire cruel behaviour. Cause your clothes say:
1) You wear our clothes, you wear our values. Your personal opinion doesn't matter: you have to conform.
2) It is not you who is acting. It is not even a human who is acting. You serve and express the company. You are a simple mechanical extention of the company (replace company with any other institution you wish to imagine, e.g. state, military).
So, am I oversensitive? Have I become a problemseeker? After that interview, a part of me wanted to rip of this white shirt, tear it into pieces and burn it in a public square. An other part of me told me to relax and let it go: it's just a piece of cloth.
I don't think you are oversensitive. You are spot-on on an idiotic feature of current society and even, more in general, economic model. It more or less requires people to abandon their personality, taste, preferences in return for money (jobs, and so on), and therefore survival. In several subtle and less subtle ways, including the one you describe. However, I wonder whether this problem can be avoided. I suspect it cannot be completely solved, unfortunately, because it is rooted in how human brains think. Sadly, we all judge people based on their appearance, subconsciously. Based on "rules" that are not logical: people with dark skin are perceived to be less intelligent than ligher-skinned people, women less competent than men, bearded men less reliable than unbearded men, and so on. So, I understand a company trying to avoid losing clients because of these stereotypes ingrained in our brains. Partly, we could solve them by fighting, for instance, racism and gender stereotypes (especially while growing up children). But partly, I don't know how we can ever solve it: we seem to be biologically programmed to judge beautiful people more favourably than ugly people, and taller people more favourably than shorter people. Difficult to address that :(
ReplyDelete