Dress in Academia

[LA Guy]

My friends at a major university hospital told me that their department chairman posted a video showing off muscular torso and abs after he got ripped from doing Insanity. I just saw the video and the results are very impressive. I tried doing Insanity but it is too tough on my knees.

My wife went through the insanity program once, as did I. I was also doing some other training, but I cut back to focus on insanity. It's a good workout, but yes, it's hard on your knees, and tbh, it really is lacking in strength training. I actually lost a fair bit of strength through my upper body and particular my back when I went through the program. I got really adept at jumping up and down though.

 

[LA Guy]

Quote: I come from a multi-generational academic family. I'm the only male who actually resigned from academia or medicine (and most of those guys/gals hold teaching positions at one of the big Canadian universities in addition to doing clinical work). I think that there is a representative, or has been a representative, of our family, in pretty much every top Canadian University. The older generation are all senior or retired, and the younger generation are all either recently tenured or up for tenure. Just from one family, across a number of disciplines, and spanning the gamut from "new academic" to "**** this, I'm 65 and outta here" the way people dress runs the gamut.

Nearly all the men wear just a shirt and trousers, with varying degrees of success/abject failure. One of my uncles, predictably in CS, only ones one pair of shoes - brown "sorta dress shoes, sorta sneakers, could be walking shoes", which he wears with anything from jeans to a suit. I think that he actually bought a pair of black shoes when my grandmother died. I was always the clotheshorse of the family, so even as the most junior academic, I had a closet full of suits and pretty good leather shoes. I never wore them to work, though. Leather jackets, dark jeans, sneakers or boots, tees or henleys, sometimes a scarf. That was me. And now I am in lounge clothes.

 

[LA Guy]

I would like to remind people, especially our colleagues burdened by the norms of knowledge-based disciplines, that focus on I/K is a microagression. I hope I don't need to post the UCLA guidelines for you, but I will if i have to. I think R is still safe, so long as the focus is on quantity and results.

I feel like you would fit in well in Portland, the nicer parts of Seattle, or the non-tech parts of San Francisco.

 

[Academic2]

[...] One of my uncles, predictably in CS, only ones one pair of shoes - brown "sorta dress shoes, sorta sneakers, could be walking shoes", which he wears with anything from jeans to a suit. [...]

In the news today: Canadian Researcher Discovers the Legendary ‘One-Shoe’!

Cheers,

Ac

 

[Academic2]

Quote:
Thanks.

Canada is an interesting case because it’s bi-lingual (and bi-cultural). I imagine that Toronto has a rather different ethos than Montreal, for example. (I speak as someone who likes both cities, by the way.)

I’ve known Americans who taught at McGill who found navigating the cultural politics, even as an outsider, to be challenging. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the symbolism of dress is more charged in such places than it is elsewhere.

Cheers,

Ac

 

[AldenPyle]

A sense of autonomy is a key ingredient in high level teaching or advanced research. That sense of autonomy is reflected in varied clothing styles. Autonomy is also a main reward for a successful academic career. Freedom from social norms is exercised as a prerogative of successful academics and as a status marker (i.e. the red sneaker effect is strong among professors).

The dynamics of dress style (on and off campus) have been driven by the changing status of tech workers in society. The rising importance of STEM fields in the post-war era freed science and engineering fields professors from external social norms; no more clip-on ties or short-sleeve dress shirts.Since the 90's, STEM norms have become dominant in other fields. Young researchers in social science (including most business fields) are so teched up, they are halfway to comp sci, in any case. As quant skills have become more important in business, the nerdification of everything has reduced the gravitational pull of conservative business dress on professional schools.

 

[heldentenor]

A sense of autonomy is a key ingredient in high level teaching or advanced research. That sense of autonomy is reflected in varied clothing styles. Autonomy is also a main reward for a successful academic career. Freedom from social norms is exercised as a prerogative of successful academics and as a status marker (i.e. the red sneaker effect is strong among professors).

I agree, but I think we've come almost full circle as a society. Today it's not the cargo shorts and T-shirts but rather the tweeds and ties that signify autonomy and difference from norms through sartorial expression, at least on most campuses.

 

[am55]

I agree, but I think we've come almost full circle as a society. Today it's not the cargo shorts and T-shirts but rather the tweeds and ties that signify autonomy and difference from norms through sartorial expression, at least on most campuses.

I think the dynamic is further complicated by the directionality of the move in terms of relative formality. If you're putting on a T-shirt or - as I saw a visiting professor do - jeans and white trainers with your black tie top half, you're wilfully downgrading the dress code to show you can get away with it. If - as I saw the legal team at my previous employer do - you're putting on a suit and tie when surrounded by people in jeans, you're actually dressing up and looking sharper, perhaps even signalling your belonging to a certain group ("ah, it's the lawyers, they're always sharp") which is not offensive in the way downgrading would be and indeed might generate positive feelings.

It's also context dependent. The half-black-tie prof was offensive to other attendees because he was attending a day time semi-formal event in London and so got it doubly wrong (black tie in daytime, jeans when the dress code was lounge suits) and clearly on purpose. I also attended a conference in Singapore where the most famous speaker had come straight from Silicon Valley, and wore the SV status dress of jeans and hoodie ("look at me, unicorn CEO pitching Sequoia in pyjamas"). The entire conference was in lounge suits, most with ties, as is customary in Asia, and his talk was received relatively silently considering his fame, and many people in the audience were audibly commenting on how he looked, which is quite something at a tech conference. But he'd have fitted right in at TED in San Francisco...

 

[AldenPyle]



I agree, but I think we've come almost full circle as a society.  

Almost is the keyword. I'm thinking Paulie Gaultieri velour track suits or maybe the full Hefner.

 

[Coburn]

.... Autonomy is also a main reward for a successful academic career. Freedom from social norms is exercised as a prerogative of successful academics and as a status marker ...

But as it has become ubiquitous in Academia and Silicon Valley, it has lost it's power as a status marker. It has become a conformist uniform.

You could make the argument the classic lounge suit is now a more powerful status marker. Particularly if it has the fit and quality of high end tailoring. As USA has lost the cultural memory of tailored clothing, dressing down no longer works as a status marker.

Dressing down is a status marker only if others are convinced that you consciously reject the traditional dress that they are forced to wear. But, if you (and your audience) no longer know how to dress traditionally, (and are no longer required to dress traditionally) you simply mark yourself as another middle class prole.

 

[Academic2]

[...]

Dressing down is a status marker only if others are convinced that you consciously reject the traditional dress that they are forced to wear. But, if you (and your audience) no longer know how to dress traditionally, (and are no longer required to dress traditionally) you simply mark yourself as another middle class prole.

Yes. With the decline of such global norms (‘traditions’) more local norms or conventions become increasingly important in determining what counts as a socially meaningful departure in a particular context and what doesn't.

Cheers,

Ac

 

[WhereNext]

With absolutely no segue at all: while discussing some of the perks of a relatively open dress codes generally in academia, someone mentioned the challenge of dressing for the interview because of this lack of clarity. This struck me as an interesting point, particularly as I'm someone who interviews a lot (I'm a flake....fine, I said it!). How much of the standard interview advice is relevant, in your experiences? I always go with the traditional advice (dark suit, white or light blue shirt, conservative tie, conservative oxfords) though I feel fine doing a white linen pocket square in a presidential fold which I appreciate some frown upon. I do also occasionally wear 3-piece suits or a plain silver tie bar if wearing a 2-piece suit, so, I'm mostly in line with standard advice, with tiny deviations.

Given the vagaries of location, discipline, etc. we have discussed, is there even advice you could give to an aspiring academic as to what to wear to their first interview?

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Given the vagaries of location, discipline, etc. we have discussed, is there even advice you could give to an aspiring academic as to what to wear to their first interview?

I'd give exactly the same advice to aspiring academics for interviews as I'd give to anyone going for interviews for a professional job. Err slightly on the side of conservatism for the discipline, place and culture in which you are interviewing, and if you don't really know what those norms are, the standard interview suit outfit will not be a mistake. If you are going to be at all flashy or unusual then you sure as hell need to have the intellectual goods to back it up.

 

[Academic2]

With absolutely no segue at all: while discussing some of the perks of a relatively open dress codes generally in academia, someone mentioned the challenge of dressing for the interview because of this lack of clarity. This struck me as an interesting point, particularly as I'm someone who interviews a lot (I'm a flake....fine, I said it!). How much of the standard interview advice is relevant, in your experiences? I always go with the traditional advice (dark suit, white or light blue shirt, conservative tie, conservative oxfords) though I feel fine doing a white linen pocket square in a presidential fold which I appreciate some frown upon. I do also occasionally wear 3-piece suits or a plain silver tie bar if wearing a 2-piece suit, so, I'm mostly in line with standard advice, with tiny deviations.

Given the vagaries of location, discipline, etc. we have discussed, is there even advice you could give to an aspiring academic as to what to wear to their first interview?

There’s probably some variability depending on discipline and location.

In my world, search committees understand that candidates dress up for interviews and, if only unconsciously, come to expect it. Better to be a bit overdressed than underdressed, since any hint from the candidate that he isn’t taking the procedure seriously would be damaging.

An interview is a special occasion; committee members won’t (or at least shouldn’t) extrapolate from it to conclusions about how, for example, a candidate might dress in the classroom. I would recommend a dark two-piece suit of conservative design, exactly as conventional wisdom suggests.

Cheers,

Ac

 

[WhereNext]

I normally give the standard dark suit/conservative tie answer when asked (and, of course, sometimes when I'm not asked!). It's always stuck with me, however, that at one interview, there were multiple comments of "nice suit" (it was NOT a nice suit, but it was a suit!) and also the occasional story of "I walked into the interview and they were all in shorts" from other folks (often the natural sciences). For my first interview (assistant professor, Education), I believe the most common outfit was chinos and a polo shirt for the interviewers. In the UK (same field), it was all suits and ties and for South Africa (Business), it was a mix of jacket and tie down to jeans and a button down shirt. I wore the "uniform" confidently to all of them; as others have said, I was always the most formally dressed, but never in a way that felt "wrong".