My Turn To Deal With A Dress Code

[Abax]

Ron,

I dealt with the same situation about 9 months ago, although in my case the implementation of the dress code was at a national level.

Here's what I've found while researching the topic of how I might continue to wear a kilt at work. Despite some suggestions by sympathetic readers that your rights are being violated (and I'm sympathetic too), employers seem to be afforded wide latitude in setting dress codes, even when the employees aren't in the public eye. Legal exceptions have been made by U. S. (and Canadian) courts for particular articles of clothing associated with long-established and well attended religions, as well as clothing associated with a reasonable accommodation for disabled employees. Apart from these exceptions, I haven't found any legal precedent where employees were able to enforce their choice of clothing against the employer's wishes . . . just the opposite seems to be the case. And I can't find anything that would support the contention that our civil rights include an ability to enforce our clothing choices while in the employ of another. Diversity, as others have hinted, is at the convenience of the employer.

My supervisor told me that my wearing kilts has been disruptive at the agency for the two years I've been doing it and that I just don't see the disruption and others have been afraid to tell me.

I have had some training regarding sexual harassment as a routine adjunct to my employment. If I understand your supervisor's innuendo, she's trying to invoke language normally associated with a sexual harassment allegation. I don't think an assertion of sexual harassment would stand legal scrutiny, and there's no special protection for people who are afraid to tell someone else their clothing is "disruptive." But your employer may still act to establish a dress code (or even apply individual direction) to remove what they perceive as a distraction. The threat of some type of legal action to allow a kilt probably has been effective for some people, but as best I can tell, carrying out that threat is most likely a waste of time.

In the past, I thought less of people who wore clothing that deviated well beyond the norm. I try to be much more tolerant of that behavior now that I choose to wear something outside the norm myself. But even before I contemplated wearing a kilt, I gave certain trend setters much greater latitude when it came to clothing. An actor or a celebrity of some sort could deviate a lot farther from the norm without evoking a negative judgment from me. These trend setters vary from group to group and for individuals, but I think society allows them to slowly modify standards. Nothing about this process is transparent or logical, but it is reflected in what the majority chooses to wear.

When I first started wearing a kilt, I tried on lots of different reasons for wearing one. Some of those were logical, like comfort, so it only seemed natural to try and press my case for wearing a kilt under a new dress code using logic. But I don't think our society makes clothing choices based on logic. As an entity, the faceless, nameless, transitive group that sets our clothing norms can't respond to rational thought, it only seeks to urge everyone into submitting to the norm. When we use logic to argue our case for wearing a kilt, we're ultimately arguing with a group that will respond by beating non-conformity into the ground (even literally).

You and I are part of that group, and while we might affect the norm in some really small way, we uncharacteristically resist the pressure to conform. But I think people who devise dress codes set out to knowingly conform, and worse yet, to conform to a narrow slice of normalcy they think is appropriate for their situation. Their decisions seem to be emotional, not logical. So even when you're dealing with one person, logic escapes them. I've given up trying to be logical about dress codes . . . I just don't believe people think about clothing that way: In truth, neither do I.

So if I come up with a way to wear a kilt despite a dress code, I suspect it will hinge on something that appeals to society's (and my employer's) emotions. As a counselor, you might have leg up on me for this one.

Abax