Only a few days ago, The Chronicle for Higher Education published an online article called "What We Wear in the Underfunded University."
Forgive the serious nature of my post--it is not as fun as others--which deals with some of the ideas in Shahidha Bari's writing. Incidentally, Bari, a senior lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London, is "writing a book on the philosophy of dress."
The snippets I include below from Bari's article are troubling to me, as is the title of her essay, for the title and the content of the article do not align. Bari does not really talk about underfunded universities--that was the clickbait title--but rather hails some of the tried and true? stereotypes of how professors dress. I hope that you will think back on my posts and reflect that I wear what I want to wear--and do so on a tight budget, indeed always buying my clothes on the deepest sale. I do not subscribe to the idea of what a professor should wear, but what we can wear (when we want to wear it, and sometimes have to, in the case of convocation or graduation).
I will engage with Bari's account with my own responses, written in blue.
"The way that we dress in the academy has changed because the academy has changed. Learned professors once inspired confidence with their tweed jackets and elbow-patched blazers, understandably unbothered by fleeting fashions when the longue durée of tenure stretched so happily ahead of them. A few hard-wearing separates, well-made and durable, in a muted palette, could make for a perfectly passable and desperately dull uniform, worn on rotation, week by week.
By contrast, the harried teaching assistants of today’s university, underpaid and overworked, have neither time nor income to spare on sartorial matters. Somehow they must seamlessly segue from graduate students slumming in sneakers to professorial formality. A blazer thrown over a Ramones T-shirt might do the trick, or you could try fishing out that pair of respectably stout court shoes you bought for the wedding you went to last summer."
The first paragraph's first sentence clearly only refers to men. The second might refer to women, or not.
The second paragraph, too, seems to speak of men....Hmm. Do women work in the academy? Is Bari's piece satirical? Is the author intentionally leaving out women as a strategy?
At least the second paragraph mentions that teaching assistants are underpaid and overworked, but it should mention that contingent and tenure-track faculty are in the same boat. Tenured faculty often feel the same.
"There is a gap between the way the professionalized university wants to present itself and the less glossy realities faced by the people who teach within it."
Maybe this passage deserves praise for mentioning the gap, but it does not truly get at the problem. The university does not recognize sometimes the "less glossy"--??--"realities" of the professors who are trying to balance student loan debt, house payments, childcare, and more while teaching a full load and maybe having the time, care, and funds to buy "professional" clothes.
"What we wear should not matter: Ideas, arguments, theories, and thought are the stuff in which academics trade. But our institutions are riven by power, and teaching and research are themselves underwritten by claims to authority and expertise. No matter how much we know, we still feel the need to show that we know it to solidify our status as bona fide intellectuals, deserving of deference and respect. One of the ways we demonstrate our possession of knowledge is in what we wear — an age-old tradition beginning with Plato orating in a toga. Only now we stroke manicured beards in thought, carry bulging book bags to demonstrate commitment, and wield Moleskine notebooks when inspiration strikes.
But, sometimes, embarrassingly, the assurance and authority we possess on the inside is betrayed by the clothes we wear on the outside."
"What we wear should not matter," Bari says, but we all know that it does. We--the instructors of university classes, the colleagues in university departments--must know that people are evaluating us constantly. Yet again, the author only seems to come at this topic from a male perspective. I don't have a well manicured beard to stroke or carry a bulging book bag or Mokeskine notebook around. Do I not count? Is Bari making fun of male professors?
"To show that you care about your clothes can be taken as a token of intellectual inferiority."
Seriously hoping that this is a joke. If not, I am inferior. (Don't worry, I don't believe that!)
"Wearing a black turtleneck, of course, condemns you to existential crisis, being, as it is, so beloved of pained writers and French philosophers. Part of its allure is pragmatic insofar as it circumnavigates the stuffiness of a shirt and tie, whilst not quite degrading the wearer to the slovenly blasphemy of a T-shirt. What we wear can signal our intellectual identifications, nodding to the schools of thought to which we subscribe."
"Shirt and tie"? (for women too?). "slovenly blasphemy of a T-shirt"? (for women too?) If I wear a black turtleneck am I advertising my existential crisis or that the wind chill is 20 below? Am I suddenly advertising a school of critical theory?
"Yet not all of us can wear what we like. Behind our workplace wardrobes lies the nexus of inequalities that structure the university. Dress bears upon our relationships with students and staff. The female professor who looks younger than her years knows this; she thinks hard about how to connote her age and command the respect her learning deserves. So too does the recently graduated teaching assistant who wants not to be mistaken for a student any longer, but to be seen by colleagues as an equal in the competitive job market. 'Dress for the job you want,' goes the mystifying mantra. The irony is that this should mean so little in an industry marked by a paucity of any jobs at all."
Wow! This is the essay's last paragraph. So much packed into one paragraph. I'll break it down.
1. Not all of us can wear what we like, she says. Why not? Please explain. It has to do with the cost of clothes, the fit of clothes, the inaccessibility of clothes, etc.
2. Female professors who look younger than....? try to look older so that she can gain respect? Does this mean wearing suits and ties or dowdy clothes? Please explain. At least Bari points out the inequity that women face--the ageism that works against us.
3. Recently graduated teaching assistants...oy, this one is hopeless, it seems. The article ends by basically saying to the graduated MA or PhD student, you're SOL. Clothes are the least of your concern. :(
Rather than publishing articles that reify stereotypes about what academics do or should wear, let's find ways to talk to academics about what we can wear and how to wear it with confidence. Let's tell each other where we found some good deals, which stores have sizes larger than 10, and more. Let's not keep lamenting how much academia sucks, and start to talk about feeling good in our own skins.
This is what What Professors Wear tries to do--it tries to celebrate and enjoy what at least this professor (i.e., moi) wears. It hopes to give you hope that you can wear items in your closet and find ways to wear them differently. As my last blog post indicates, even that awesome T-shirt can be worn to class--just wear it in a way makes you feel confident. It hopes to give you courage to try something new, too.
