Parents might get an email if a student violates school clothing policy. Human resources might make a call about work dress code violations. But when political power is at stake, dress codes hold a unique gravity.<\/p>\n
The rules are about \u201cwho gets invited to the table and in what way they\u2019re seen as appropriate to be at the table,\u201d says Liz Smith, a professor of politics and international affairs.<\/p>\n
Smith and research assistant Miles Koniver \u201925 presented \u201cPolicing Fashion: Dress Codes and Political Power\u201d at this past January\u2019s annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association. They co-wrote the paper with three of Smith\u2019s colleagues: Zara Anishanslin, an associate professor of history and art history at the University of Delaware; Nora Carleson, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Delaware;
\nand Barbara Palmer, a professor of political science at Baldwin Wallace University.<\/p>\n
The timing couldn\u2019t have been more fitting. The same day as their presentation, news from Missouri traveled across the country: Amended rules would require women in that state\u2019s House of Representatives to cover their shoulders with a cardigan or jacket.<\/p>\n
Smith, who studies women in politics, says the investigation into legislative dress codes was motivated by long-standing challenges that have grown more pronounced as governmental bodies became more diverse. She wanted to investigate what codes existed, what they meant and to whom they gave preference.<\/p>\n
The research ranged from online searches to emails to Zoom meetings. Koniver, who\u2019s majoring in politics and religion, found dress codes recorded in places such as a senate library, a legislative research unit, a secretary of state\u2019s office and even in a state constitution.<\/p>\n
Their research found that nearly 60% of state chambers have written dress codes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe norm is presented as male,\u201d Smith says.<\/p>\n
In Texas, for example, the legislative dress code gives specific guidelines for men but not for women. And the code, unlike most, is reviewed annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an oversight,\u201d Koniver says. \u201cIt\u2019s a deliberate choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt reproduces gender hierarchies,\u201d Smith says. The rules are \u201call centered around masculinity.\u201d Frequent use of \u201cbusiness attire\u201d for women assumes a widely shared understanding of an ambiguous expression.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite its common usage as fashionable short-hand, \u2018business attire\u2019 often remains implicitly rather than explicitly defined,\u201d the authors write.<\/p>\n
Other common terms have a loaded backstory. With the input of a co-author who is a material cultural historian, for example, Smith and Koniver learned that \u201cpantsuit\u201d referred to a little boy\u2019s outfit in the early 1900s.<\/p>\n
Smith says dress codes in any setting are usually defended as establishing standards and creating an institutional mood.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then they also kind of shape who belongs and who doesn\u2019t belong,\u201d she says. Even more troubling are hidden dress codes \u2013 unwritten rules that are still expected to be followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou might be punished for not knowing the norms,\u201d Smith says.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolicing Fashion\u201d will be published as a chapter in an edited volume on fashion in politics. Smith considers it one aspect of the broader conversation on gendered, exclusive and binary thinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more we\u2019re questioning who we are, these things are resonating,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Professor Liz Smith and her students explain how \u201cbusiness apparel\u201d and other clothing rules are used to define who belongs in positions of power and who doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":27859,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2666,2299,1963],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-around-the-lake-fall-2023","category-fall-2023","category-furman-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}