Jeans. Almost everyone owns a pair. Many people, including me, regard them as their comfort clothes of choice. Jeans for me are like armor, allowing me to feel more competent and confident than I do in other attire. Jeans have also become a symbol of Management’s magnanimity.
Whether an office maintains business dress or has relaxed to business casual what both types of offices have in common is “casual Friday.” In most places this means staff are allowed to wear jeans which is fine in temperate weather but in any location that actually has summer weather being allowed to wear jeans on Friday becomes just another control mechanism.
While jeans are worn as the comfort clothes of choice by many they’re worn to do hard, outdoor work, and, increasingly, for a more relaxed but still dressed up look in social settings. Jeans are not cheap. The average cost of a pair of Levi’s 501s is around $50 with some designer pairs costing upwards of $1,000. Jeans are also not light.
Last Friday in DC the heat index at 7:00 was 79degF. At noon, when most people want to leave the office to get lunch, the heat index was 86degF. And if you’ve taken advantage of Management’s largess and worn jeans to the office, and if you’re me, you’re disinclined to leave your desk to get lunch and what do you do when you don’t leave your desk, and when the firewall is locked down tighter than a duck’s butt? Why you work more, of course!
I write this mostly in jest but it seems to me that if I can see the smallest of control mechanisms, which is what dictating what clothes people can wear really is, it’s going to be easier for me to see the larger control mechanisms and to subvert them.
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