Dress Profesh: Genderqueer Fashion in Academia

This piece is part of a larger conversation about how academics navigate implicit dress codes in higher education. In particular, this piece focuses on genderqueer professional dress in the context of a small women's college in the South.

First, a little bit about dress codes.

In her book, Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture, Ruth Rubinstein explains that clothing, formalized through institutional dress codes, is critical part of understanding "the ideas and values underlying institutional patterns of discourse,"¹ which are often oppressive. In the piece "You Call It Professionalism; I Call It Oppression in a Three-Piece Suit," Carmen Rios states, "dress codes make room to turn a lot of 'isms' into policies—especially since typical standards of professional dress are, at the core, racist, sexist, classist, and xenophobic."² For example, natural hair has long been seen as "unprofessional,"³ and in 2016 a judge ruled that it was legal to ban dreadlocks in the workplace.⁴ Discrimination also exists in relation to size and traditional notions of gendered beauty practices;⁵ however, this can be a double-edged sword because women who are seen as "too pretty" are often taken less seriously.⁶ These examples show that dress codes work to discipline bodies to be Lorde's "mythic norm":⁷ white, young, male, able-bodied, straight—to which we would add cisgender.

In academia, dress codes and dress practices are often talked about anecdotally. Although many institutions of higher education may not have formalized dress codes for faculty, this does not mean that bodies are not normed based on appearance. For example, many have written about student evaluations that include comments on the appearance of their instructors.⁸ Every so often publications like the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed will post opinion pieces offering advice about how academics should dress.⁹ What's important to note here is that these pieces speak to the experiences of people in mostly privileged bodies: cisgender, white, male, etc.

Dress codes are one way that institutions, both explicitly and implicitly, turn people into objects or policies, and create distance between the lived experiences of the people practicing the dress codes and the people who create and monitor them. In reaction to this silencing, in 2015 Katie created the activist gallery Dress Profesh. Dress Profesh is a digital gallery of user submitted images and text that showcase what people wear to work in relation and opposition to their dress codes. The idea of "profesh," as opposed to "professional," means being aware of audience, purpose, and context. It means being able to measure risk versus reward, and it is different every moment of every day for every person. Dress Profesh advocates for use of the hashtag #effyourdresscodes, with the understanding that this sort of resistance looks different for different people. Although dress codes turn people into policies or objects, Dress Profesh is a space where people can tell their stories and explain their sartorial choices. The stories often reveal moments of resistance and subversiveness that may otherwise fly under the radar.

The following transcript is from a conversation between Katie, the creator and moderator of Dress Profesh and Elroi, a queer, white, genderqueer parent and partner with a punk rock past and a good number of tattoos, who is also faculty member at a small liberal arts college in the South.

Interview

Katie Manthey (KM):

What do you do?

Elroi J. Windsor (EW):

I'm an assistant professor of sociology. I'm the chair of the department of sociology and criminal studies. I teach a bunch of classes, and I manage the department. In my spare time, I do research, as part of that academic gig.

KM:

How would you describe the dress code of your institution?

EW:

There's no official dress code. I've never been told what to wear, in any formal capacity. In my observations, the dress code would depend on the position that worker is in. All of the administrators dress in business attire. Administrators meaning deans and...