BUG: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution

Guys in Ties? One Tug Closer to Strangulation!

146 C H R I S T O P H E R J O N H E U E R Guys in Ties? One Tug Closer to Strangulation! In a way, actually, it’s fitting. Most men already walk around the workplace like they’re dead. Why shouldn’t they make a morning ritual out of sticking their necks in a noose? Explain this to me: The first thing a guy takes off after he gets home from work is his tie. In fact, most men can’t even wait that long to finally chuck the damned thing across the room. Want to know how to identify the car of a man? Look in the back seat. There’ll be eight crumpled ties back there, scattered amongst the empty 7-11 Big Gulp cups. Yet the guy who shows up for an interview without a tie is the same guy who will eventually go home without a job offer. And the guy who shows up for work one too many times without a tie is eventually going home without a job. Why is that? We want to hire honest and trustworthy male employees, no? Yet in the workplace, we frown (and in many cases, stomp) on their not wearing the one thing 99 percent would say least defines them. Isn’t a tie just a lie? If I don’t wear one for two-thirds of the day, why should you suddenly trust me more if I alter my normal behavior for the remaining third (translation: the workday) and put one on? Hell, the biggest advocates for ties aren’t even men! I find it disturbing that the same women who have spent a century B U G 147 trying to wiggle out of corsets should find free-breathing males to be such a threat. You know, I’m not asking for the world here. We already don’t allow Black people to be black, gay people to be gay, or Deaf people to be Deaf. But I thought, shit, maybe we could just allow guys to take off their ties. The way I figure it, if the whole world doesn’t fall apart after that, our newfound bravery might allow us to do away with nooses altogether! And then we can all be exactly who we are! White Dress Shirts— Making the World Safer for Workplace Projection! Although I’m against neckties, I support white dress shirts. In any workplace environment, dysfunctional people will project their own unresolved emotional issues onto you daily. Therefore, from a job-security standpoint, you’re far better off resembling a movie screen as much as possible. Example: Last week, I wore my standard khaki shorts, leather sandals, and a short-sleeved cotton dress shirt to class. I did this because 1) it was hot out; 2) I dislike sweating, a condition usually expedited by draping oneself in layers upon layers of clothing; and 3) I don’t feel any huge, pressing need to 148 C H R I S T O P H E R J O N H E U E R be dressed any different when I’m standing in the middle of a classroom than when I’m standing in the middle of my mushroom -laden lawn, garden spade in hand. What happened? A colleague stopped me in the hallway and “praised” my outfit, rhetorically (translation: passiveaggressively !) inquiring whether or not faculty ought to be required to adhere to a dress code. Now I will grant you that a teacher should at least try to look reasonably decent. In the spirit of cooperation, I have already compromised a bit on this point. If I actually were standing in the middle of my mushroom-laden lawn, garden spade in hand, it’s a good bet that I’d probably also be wearing my favorite cutoff (at the shoulder, not the stomach—I’m not that sexy) Budweiser T-shirt. I have since learned, however, that cutoffs do little to protect my upper arms from sunburn, and I don’t want premature wrinkling to mess up my tattoos. The artwork is very precise. So . . . short-sleeved dress shirts it is. That being said, however, let me also say this: I have been an English teacher for more than ten years now. And although I do not claim possession of anything beyond the most basic level of fashion sense...