Kill the Dress Code Sir Richard stands in the middle of his lavish room, being dressed up and groomed by his league of servants. They’re just about finishing up… the jacket of his suit is being slipped on, his hair is just about brushed up. All that’s left are the shoes. Servant-A is on standby with a basket on which a pair of shiny black leather shoes sits and Servant-B begins to slip the shoes onto Sir Richard’s feet. After only 45 minutes in the dressing room, Sir Richard is now fully dressed in all his aristocratic glory and ready to start his day. With his arm bent behind his upright back, he elegantly walks down the stairs of his vast 19th century mansion as he puffs on his pipe. He walks into The Tea Room, where Lady Catherine is sipping on her tea. She holds out her gloved arm, and Sir Richard customarily bends down and kisses her hand and welcomes her in his home. After a good 30-minute conversation about the weather and The Queen and her carriage and the French, Sir Richard and Lady Catherine depart for a stroll around his estate to enjoy the fresh breeze outside. It’s just a little bit windy, but the hat-strap around Lady Catherine’s face makes sure her hat is nicely secured on her head, and the layer of wireworks underneath the bottom half of her dress kills any possibility of occurring embarrassing situations. As they walk, they cross Sir Richard’s tennis court. He makes Lady Catherine an offer to join him in a game and she accepts. Richard gestures to the servants standing at their posts around the tennis court, and they fetch him and Lady Catherine a pair of rackets and a ball. Sir Richard and Lady Catherine play tennis. We read stuff like that and see ‘em in the movies and go “hahaha,” yet to this day we still apply impractically rigid dress codes to ourselves; like some companies will require their employees to show up at work in formal or semi-formal attire, some restaurants’ policies include a dress code of smart-casual. And weddings? Well damn, you’ve got the whole nine yards there; tuxedos, hair spray, sparkly soirée gowns, full make-up, high heels, you’ve got it all. Some people argue that one should dress for each and every occasion. Well I totally agree, but only if that “dress” serves a purpose on that specific occasion, like say… if I was going to war, for example, then yeah, okay, I’d have to wear my padded helmet, my bullet-proof vest, my army boots, sure, because if I didn’t, I’d be in seriously deep shit, but a tie at work? Is a long piece of silk tied up into a knot around my throat supposed to enhance my performance? Who the fart invented the tie anyway? I mean, why, dude, why?! Employers’ excuse is that they want their people to look “presentable” when meeting up with people from other firms, but when you come to think of it, while employees from this company are sitting there in a meeting with the employees from that company all tied up in their suits, and acting all professional and stuff, as they crave for the day to end so they can get back into their pajamas again, the people from the other company are probably thinking the very same thing. So if both sides don’t like it, why does it even exist? If both sides just wore what they felt comfortable in, everyone would be happy. And who the hell set the rules for what’s presentable and what isn’t anyway? What’s to say that a pair of slippers isn’t presentable as opposed to a piece of silk dangling from your neck? These are all just cultural boundaries that have accumulated in our heads over the ages and have now been cemented to our brain cells, taking the disguise of the “How-To-Be-Civilized Bible,” much like how Sir Richard and Lady Catherine found it normal to play tennis in formal garb back in the 19th century. Y’know what’s really funny? Is that those cultural boundaries are in origin not even ours as an Eastern society. We were invaded by them, much like the rest of the world, back when Western culture’s take on being civilized was more or less rather barbaric, really. We’ve been convinced to believe that driving around in a piece of machinery that omits poisonous gasses in the atmosphere is civilized as opposed to riding a horse, we’ve been convinced to believe that walking on a pavement of solidified chemicals is civilized as opposed to walking on natural dirt, we’ve been convinced to believe that eating with a fork in your left hand and a knife in your right is civilized as opposed to really digging into the food, we’ve been convinced to believe that wearing a suit or dress that reduces our mobility is civilized as opposed to wearing a “galabeya.” We’re becoming more in contact with plastics and metals than we are with sand and wood, we’re smelling more smoke and smog than we are the scent of flowers. In short… we’re becoming less and less human. Whoa! Talk about total psychosomatic voyaging!! That was deep. Now back to dress codes; semi-formal, smart casual, street smart? Look at us; we’ve got dressing styles all categorized and shit. Clothes are just clothes, dude. And somebody has just got to do something about the term “dress code.” What is that? A code on how to dress? It’s funny how people in this society are always accused of wearing masks and not being themselves, while at the same time they’re required to dress in a specific way in specific places and on specific occasions. What a person wears is a reflection of the self; what that person pulls out of the closet at a specific moment and what colors he/she decides to mix occurs in accordance with the person’s character and mindset. Depriving a person of that form of self expression is major oppression, and dictating a person on what to wear is like dictating part of his/her personality on how to behave. How can a restaurant have a dress code anyway? Basically they’re outright saying they only feed people who dress so and so? I am not in any way anti-suit, mind you. Well… maybe I am, but regardless, it’s not the death of suits, ties, and high heels I ask for. Restricting people from wearing those would be just as bad as restricting people from wearing the clothes that fall into other categories. What I ask for is the right to wear anything you goddamn want. You wanna go to the fast food joint in your suit and tie? Go ahead. You wanna go to your sister’s wedding in a “galabeya”? Nothing should suggest otherwise. You wanna go to work in your bathing suit? Why the hell not? It’s your basic human right to dress how you feel, you are born with it, and you should live with it. Y’know, I know it’s not right to claim to be able to predict the future, but I’m almost 100% positive that a few years from now human rights groups will be fighting for people’s right to dress whatever whenever and wherever. They will fight and they will win. Laws will be penned to support the cause, and generations down the line, our kids’ kids’ kids will be reading about it and laughing their butts off. But why wait till then? The human race is already several decades behind in so many other areas; we still ride around in automobiles that run on poisonous oil and gas, over half the foods we eat are infected by chemicals, and we’ve yet to colonize another planet. At least getting rid of the dress code doesn’t require any heavy funding or research and development. It’s time to restore back the ordinary pleasures of humanity. It’s time to unshit things up. It’s time to kill the dress code. |