You have to look professional!

Why can't I wear jeans?

Looking professional at work is about the same as gift wrapping garbage. It looks nice on the outside, but does not have any actual value. The same thing goes for people at work. Wearing a suit does not make you any more productive or easier to get along with, but it does make you look cleaner. In reality, wearing a suit gives other people the impression that you care about your appearance. What that gets you in the long run is that people may treat you different because you dress in a way that you want to be treated. Everyone can do their jobs in jeans or shorts or any other type of clothing they want to unless that job requires specific equipment like a fireman. What annoys me is the idea of having to wear nice clothes to work exists because its a status thing between people at the office.

This idea that nice clothes at work is important is really persisted by people actually following along. This is similar to someone being a celebrity because they are a celebrity. You find this a lot in Reality TV where someone becomes "famous" for not actually doing anything besides being known by other people for being famous. Usually this kind of fame wains over time. This also happens with fads of all kinds. They are only cool while enough people think they are cool. When the total number of people who think the fad is still cool is not enough to sustain public support then the fad fails and gets replaced by a new one. The problem with the "Nice Clothes At Work" is that too many people adhere to it giving it more and more power.

We are clearly deluding ourselves by wearing nice clothes at work, trying to make other people, as well as ourselves, think we are smarter, more attractive, and easier to deal with. People see through those mirages of self promotion almost instantly anyway if they have any kind of common sense. If people perceive you in a more enlightened way when you wearing a suit than not wearing a suit it seems like their problem, not yours. You should not have to change the way you do things because of someone's shortcomings as human being.

It also removes the individuality that we so desperately crave. Especially for men. Women have many choices as far nice clothes for work. Between skirts, dresses and pants just for the bottom half they already are outweighing the men's options. Men can wear nice pants or slacks, and a button down shirt. If you have to wear a tie, you have some small flexibility there but it is false. Your tie still needs to be professional looking. So instead of flexibility its really just another constraint of the same exact kind. The only options are solid colors, or very slight patterns. I'm sure you do not see a lot of Mickey Mouse ties from CEOs.

Stopping the Trend

The only way to stop something like this is to break away completely. Some offices realize this and let people wear whatever they want. There is plenty of research to show that people work better when they are happy which you would think would lead into, oh I don't know, trying to make people as happy as possible at work! Everyone has to change their minds for this to work. Once people see someone in a position of high authority like the president of the United States making a speech in jeans then it will be possible for the world to stop playing dress up.

I'm not advocating taking this to the extreme and wearing something that is dirty or offensive. I am not a hypocrite by thinking that people still need to be unoffensive. Clothes that smell are clearly out of the question. This gets into a different issue which is a general sense of hygiene that really should be followed because it actually makes sense.

Confession

Yes I do wear nce clothes to work, but sometimes I am given the opportunity to not wear one and its fantastic and I always protest about having to wear one. I still get just as much done without a suit as with one. Through some miracle of science I am still able to type and talk on the phone without a suit on. Someday someone will figure out how it was all done. Te only thing that changes is I get to spend less time in the morning getting ready. Some people, even those who agree with me, tell me to shut up and be thankful that I have a job to wear a suit at. To them I use a quote that is far more powerful than should be used in this post from Gandhi

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."