The politics of clothing

Two posts in one day - wow, I must be really bored today! :)

Before I started going to school, I used to pay a lot of attention to clothes. But then again, I was also a very bored child as I had no siblings close to my age to play with. So I played dress up a lot, looting the laundry basket and the wardrobes for material. I remember dressing up in the most outlandish outfits, often eliciting an amused chuckle from my mother. I loved hats; I still do, as matter of fact. Then I started attending school, where I had to wear uniforms. As my mother was overprotective and never let me leave the house to play with the neighbourhood children, coupled with a very heavy load of homework, opportunities to explore fashion ended rather abruptly.

By the time I arrived in Canada, my sense of fashion (such that it is) had been so deeply suppressed that I dressed most frugally. Looking back, I think that I had a very hard time adjusting to my high school experiences in Canada as I started dressing subconsciously to avoid attention. In retrospect, I suppose I could have made dressing well a priority of some kind back then. However, dire admonitions from my father to watch my dwindling funds made me extremely paranoid so I bought the cheapest clothes I could find. After I graduated, I did dress better but it still wasn't a priority. Of course, I was a different person back then. It wasn't until I had a life-changing experience a few years back that I started paying attention to how I looked again.

I shifted from being just a software developer to a lead and then on to a manager in just the last few years. It's fine to dress casually if you just deal with developers and managers everyday. I started having to deal with senior executives, board members and customers directly, which meant that I had to dress more appropriately. It's easier for guys - you can just wear polo shirts, dress slacks and dress shoes to work everyday and no one would think it odd. I could wear the same thing to work everyday… actually, no I can't. How I dress has a direct impact on how people respond to me. It's not a decisive factor by any means but it is a factor nonetheless, as any woman in the IT business will tell you.

So why am I blogging about something as mundane as this? Well, I went from manager to senior architect in my current position because I saw most of my friends who were in junior to middle management lose their jobs left, right and centre in the current economy. I'd rather go back to working in the trenches as a developer than get shot as a manager.

I hated it. Simply coding to someone else's tune just wasn't interesting enough any longer. Don't get me wrong, a great developer is part artist, part scientist. There is beauty and elegance in good code. Unfortunately, after doing it for so long, I was thoroughly sick of it. Nowadays, I love working with people, nurturing a product from inception to delivery, watching it grow from the seed of an idea into something that brought in seven or eight figures to the company's bottom line.

What has all this got to do with clothing? Simple: I now dressed like a manager and that made me stick out like a sore thumb among the other developers. Yes, I could go back to dressing casually but… I don't want to. Here's the funny thing: people started treating me like a manager because I dressed like one. I was worried about resentment from the managers but to my surprise, they welcomed me as one of their own probably because they desperately needed my help in managing things. So, I evolved my role into one with managerial responsibilities partly due to how I dressed. Of course, that wasn't all of it but again, it was a factor.

This is interesting to me from an anthropological perspective. It brings to mind the protective camouflage of moths or the brilliant plumage of peacocks. Yes, these are things that nature has bestowed upon the males of those species for the purposes of attraction and intimidation; remember that the IT industry is still very much a male-dominated sector and being excessively feminine gets me into trouble faster than you can stick a “Kick Me” sign on my back. We often hear the saying, “dress for success” but that's usually in the context of dressing snappier to give a good first impression. This wasn't just a first impression in my case; this was a sustained campaign on my part, albeit an unplanned one.

What does all this mean? Well, nothing really. I'm not really going to change anything in my work life as I don't need to. Mind you, doesn't the first time this has happened either - I'm blogging this because that's what I wanted to talk about right now, nothing more. I am, however, going to tweak my non-work wardrobe somewhat in the next few months as I have a corollary to test out. Should be interesting, I think - assuming I don't get shot or worse, that is. :)