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Dress Code Change for Marines - Good Idea for us All
When I was in school if someone had mentioned to me that the school system was thinking about requiring us to wear uniforms, I would have been first in line to protest! What about my individuality? What about the fact that I look bad in a skirt? Green clashes with my hair and plaid just looks bad. I would have thought it the height of absurdity to expect us all to dress alike.
As an adult, I see the situation differently. I see children wearing Britney Spears clothing to school. Young girls who would look better in Laura Ashley dresses than being dressed like a hooker walking down fifth street. We have become a nation full of undressed people. What are we thinking? It is everywhere! Women wearing clothes that show leave little to the imagination. Men with t-shirts, sagging pants with holes in them....don't we care what we look like anymore?
I know we won't return to the fifties where people actually cared about their appearance. It used to be that even the poorest man or boy owned a suit, a hat and a tie. Women wore gloves, skirts that left loads to the imagination and hats. They looked classy. Is it so wrong to wish we lived in a nation where people actually cared for appearance? How many times have you been to a store and seen women with their hair in curlers? Or in sweats and their bedroom slippers? Sweat pants have a place and it is at home. Curlers and bedroom slippers belong at home too. Saggy drawers belong in the prisons that they migrated out of.
When you meet someone for the first time, they are making a judgment about you based on your appearance. Is your hair combed? Is your shirt tucked in? Is your shirt stained or torn? Do your clothes fit (not too loose or too tight?). Just how many piercings and tattoos do you have?
We get more and more casual. Remember the casual Friday movement? Is it just me. or has that movement taken over the whole week? When we keep lowering the bar, then we encourage people to sink even lower for effect. In the fifties, a gal in shorts that weren't knee length was risque. Well, if now most gals wear shorts that barely cover their bottoms, were is there to go? Nudity? Oh yeah, Britney Spears and others have showed us that is exactly where you go from here.
So now as a parent and a 40 something adult, I am ready to see some style come back to people dress. I want to see the people at the bank wearing dressy clothes to work. I want to see kids wearing clothes that fit and cover. I don't want to see any more curlers or slippers at Walmart. I want sweat pants to stay at home and on people who are out for a walk or a jog. If we raise the bar, then kids can kick up their heels a bit, and still be respectable. But as long as adults and role models run around like there clothing doesn't matter, then children will have to go lower, just to outdo us (and emulate us).
The Marine Corps had relaxed some of their dress code rules. They were allowed to wear their cammies off base to run into a shop for a few moments for example. Now, this may not seem like a big deal, but just like our having the casual Fridays that became the casual weeks, if you let a Marine wear his Cammies to run in to pick up lunch, it is an easy step to wearing his cammies to stop at the bar for a drink or two or five.
But General James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant has recently raised the bar. Among the fashion don’ts: No shiny metal or gems on your teeth, no designs carved in your hair, no flashy jewelry and no bare midriffs or excessive cleavage. And now Marines in camouflage cannot get out of their vehicles to run an errand or grab a meal on their way to or from the base. No pumping gas, running into the post office or picking up a cup of joe, either. Although Marines were always largely prohibited from wearing uniforms off base, they were allowed to make brief stops during their commutes. Now they can stop only for a medical emergency, a traffic accident or a breakdown. My husband said this was the way it was when he was in the Marines. I can only hope that others will take notice and follow the example of the Marines and clean up our act. Our society will benefit as a whole.
One thing I couldn't help but notice as I looked up photos after I wrote this article was that
It was easy to find a picture of a Marine in Dress Blues
It was hard to find a picture of a Marine in Camouflage
It was hard to find a photo of a well-dressed couple (they all tended to be from the 50s or earlier.
It was easy to find a photo of Britney Spears (I went for the tamer ones).
Even though fashion has gone downhill, men are still dressing sharper than women. For instance check out the below shots of Johnny Depp. The sophisticated look. The hat (I love the hat and he seems to wear them a good bit, but the hair could use a trim). And then the pirate. Even when dressed as a pirate, he is sharp!
There are two ways to look at this: moral, and utilitarian.
What is the survival purpose of dressing up?
Keeping warm? keeping dry? keeping clean? These three purposes have become deprecated with the advent of running water and central air.
Impressing others? Ideally, no one should dress up or dress down simply to impress others. Abstractly, you need to impress others to gain their support as an aid to survival. But if skimpy clothing becomes pervasive, (and working in media, believe you me I know it is happening), then the skimpy clothes become an aid to say, getting a job, instead of a hindrence.
Doesn't make it right or wrong, it just makes it how it is. A certain female weather anchor I know, gets better ratings because when she wears a shorter skirt, they take a wider camera angle, and more people (whether they admit it or not), want to see it.
Morally, the subject is more complex. Morals are subjective.
Biblically, you can actually argue that we are meant to be naked. But you can also argue that we should cover ourselves in fig leaves and tell women to stay quiet in church.
So it brings up the question: is there an intrinsic moral value in not looking, for lack of a better phrase, sexy? If we are each responsible for ourselves, then are we not hurt by another's dress in the same way that we should not be hurt by what they say?
So if I dress scandalously, then is it not either damning myself (to hell, or lower survival chance, or what have you), or is it complementing the style of the evolving society around us?
I don't want to see Britney Spears' breasts. And I definitely don't have to look if they pop out. And if I don't look, it decreases the demand for it.
So, are you saying you secretly want to look, but can't admit it?
There are, surprisingly, alot of psychological and philosophical issues involved. Whilst no one may want to see my breasts, if I reveal them at the beach, people shouldn't point and stare, either.
October 26, 2007 1:08 AM
said:
Bruce, I appreciate your reading my blog and the fact that commented. I have published your comments, though I wonder if you secretly felt I wouldn't because they were contrary to my feelings. I don't like skimpy clothes. I don't like men wearing pants that are falling off. I don't want to return to Victorian dress codes, but I do think that if we continue to lower the standards of dress, we are going to run into more things like Britney showing off her private parts.
You and I travel in different circles, but I know a lot of parents who are outraged at the fact when they go to the store to buy their child clothes, particularly girls, that all they can find are tight and short articles of clothing with provocative words written on them in glitter. As a female of the species, I can't help but notice the fact that I pointed out in my article. While women's clothing has continued to get less and less, men are mostly still walking around relatively well clothed. Perhaps men have found a way to take advantage of the women's liberation movement while at the same time making women feel like they are freeing themselves.
October 26, 2007 4:55 AM
