This morning, we are going into Washington to visit the Capitol building, and, presumably because of this, we have all been reminded to dress nicely; in this case, the word ‘nicely’ instead of meaning ‘In a manner which is nice’, means, ‘Wear a suit.’
On the surface, this seems like a reasonable request. But let us drill down a bit. Why, exactly, are suits considered nice clothing? Why not pink jumpsuits, or five foot tall orange hats? These things may sound ridiculous, but a very large coloured hat as a mode of dress is no more arbitrary, capricious, or absurd than tying a strip fabric around your neck. There is no underlying, fundamental logic to what are and what are not fancy clothes; what we have is a ruleset vomited out upon the shores of modern society by the rough, semirandom social brownian motion of the past.
Is it reasonable, then, to demand, for no real reason, and without logical justification, that people wear certain things at certain times and places? Again, at first glance to this question would also be a clear ‘yes.’ But bear with me as we examine this as well.
The purpose of human civilization is to enforce rules which prevent us from harming each other, and which promote a peaceful and prosperous society, while allowing individual citizens the maximum allowable amount of freedoms. Any rules or guidelines which do not fulfill any of these goals are to be considered unreasonable, tyrannical, and unnecessary.
What, exactly, does the practice of requiring people to wear suits accomplish? Does it lower the crime rate? Does it feed the hungry, or stop crimes before they happen? Not only does it not do any of these things, it curtails to freedom of the people; the freedom to not wear an impromptu silk noose.
tl;dr: wtf? Seriously, wtf?
3 comments so far
10:49 pm - 7-15-2009
First of all, let me just say that you overanalyze to the point of absurdity… but who am I to talk. Second of all, I went to the Capitol, took a tour, walked in the senate office buildings, and observed congress in session, and I wore jeans, a t-shirt, and a badass leather jacket. So don’t sweat it if you really have a philosophical problem with suits.
Anyway, I think the societal purpose to suits is obvious. I would define society as the collective organization of human relationships. What better way to systematize that organization than by agreed-upon outward signals? Thus, we systematize the relationship between men and women with clunky watches, extra-long shorts, and short hair on the one hand, and skirts, dresses, makeup, and jewelry on the other. We signify commiseration and empathy by wearing black at a funeral. We tell who’s boss by their crown (or fountain pen, more recently). We say “I love you” with the symbol of the heart. (BTW, speaking of the “Brownian motion of the past”, the heart symbol is thought to have originated as a depiction of the female body, and is currently the symbol for restrooms in Sweden.)
The suit specifically is a sign of respect, much like combing one’s hair, and refraining from using the “f word” (haha your comment thing won’t let me write it.) These are societal conventions, yes, but they are communicative—they have content. Your objection is as absurd as saying that because there is no particular reason that we should use the word “book” to signify “book”, we should not use any word at all. (Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m all for nudity)
10:17 am - 7-16-2009
Hmm. While I have nothing as thought-out or well-written as Brighid’s horrendously long response, I have something far more practical. Your comment feature is broken and you should probably do something about it. I had to wrestle with it for like ten minutes in order to be able to actually type in the comment box, because it kept redirecting me to the ‘website’ box. Does that make sense at all? So anyway I dunno if this is my fault or yours but I’m going to blame you. So there. Now go fix it, you lazy bum.
10:18 am - 7-16-2009
Also I cannot spell my own name. That is you fault as well.