Casual Clothing Culture On Campus
By Amanda Jentsch, Cultural Editorial Assistant
Let’s be honest here: I was planning this article to be a funny Buzzfeed-style “I Dressed Up For Class For a Week” type of fluff piece. I thought I’d include witty anecdotes about weird looks I would get in my Monday morning lectures and complain a few times about the struggles of climbing Bascom Hill in heels (which made me seriously reconsider my commitment to this article).
Instead, going through the week, I found that nobody cared. The only weird looks I got were on the most extreme day—I’d look at a girl wearing a bodycon dress under a denim smock with heels a little weird too—but seriously, no one gave one singular care about how I was dressed.
So why dress nice? If no one is going to notice or care, then why put the effort in? Then again, why do we dress casually? Why not put effort in?
Americans transitioned to casual styles of dressing in three stages (Clement, 2015). The first was during the major societal upheaval that characterizes the post-war 1920s. This was a time when women celebrated their newfound social freedom through their styles of dressing and self-expression.
The second stage was during the 1930s and 40s, a time when shorts came into fashion, especially for men. Six hundred students at the, then all-male, Dartmouth College made their voices heard by taking to the streets in shortsーprotesting what, no one is quite sure, but shorts only grew in popularity from there (Patterson, 2015).
The third and final stage of the transition to casual looks took place in the 1950s with the advent of “unisexing” (Clement, 2015). This meant that it was more acceptable for women to wear pants, button-downs and t-shirts, as well as for men to grow their hair long.
Today, college students dress casually mostly for comfortーI mean, who voluntarily wears three-inch heels to class when comfy Birkenstocks or cute boots get you there faster and with less risk of falling?
But what happened to the idea of dressing nicely for something that matters? This is a call for you to take a look at how you contribute and participate in the campus culture here. We the students decide the unwritten rules of our campus society and those rules can always be broken and changed.
After all, in light of my experience, no one really cares about how you dress. Will you keep with the tradition of not putting effort into your appearance? Or do you buck the trend and care?
Sources:
Dierdre Clement. “When and Why Did Americans Begin to Dress So Casually?” WhatItMeanstoBeanAmerican.Org. 7 August 2015. Accessed 31 October 2019.
Troy Patterson. “He’s Got Legs.” The New York Times. 7 August 2015. Accessed 31 October 2019.