posted: May 9, 2004
My husband and I are watching the people on the street below. It must be prom night or something, as we see many couples in formal clothes wandering in and out of the convention center. It's still pretty early in the evening, so we decide they are arriving for dinner prior to the main event. Among the brightly-plumed and work-a-day crowds, we spot a blot of black which is not a tuxedo.
She is dressed entirely in black--dress, coat, stockings, shoes. Her hair is black. Her lips a post-mortem maroon in a face parchment-pale. Even at this distance, her eyes are mere gleams in the depths of black-smudged pits. But, there's nothing flamboyant or Victorian about her clothes. The coat is a simple black overcoat, the dress very conservative over plain stockings and moderate black pumps. We both stare.
We look at each other.
"Business Gothic," he suggests.
"Like Business Casual, only bleak."
"Yeah, some sort of...."
"Busi-Goth!" we chorus.
What the well-dressed undead wear to the office. Wednesday Addams as Corporate Vice President.
Logically, if your chosen life- and/or clothing-style clashes with the usual business environment, you have to make some kind of accommodation. Either you hide your identity during the business day--like Peter Parker hiding Spiderman--take a job in which your mode of dress is immaterial, or you modify your pelage until no one can reasonably complain.
No one could raise a peep about the dress or make-up of the young busi-goth below, yet she's certainly declared her lifestyle.
She's not the first busi-goth I've spotted. So far, they've all been women, since it's much harder to differentiate between a conservative businessman in a dark suit and goth in a dark suit if neither is wearing any make-up or jewelry. It's that little touch of Death, that extra bit of black which makes all the difference.
I wonder what a Business-Punk wears to work. Being a more extreme lifestyle than Gothic, how does a smart young punk "dress down"?
In theory, I suppose a truly dedicated member of the Punk movement doesn't get the sort of job which requires shedding the extra piercings, the studs, the offensive t-shirt and the bovver boots. I'd love to see an Execu-Punk: ripped Sex-Pistols t-shirt--held together with safety pins--flashing under a black suit jacket, tight trousers and motorcycle boots with the row of buckles up the side, security key-card on a retracting spool dangling from a safety-pin shoved through the earlobe. As a business rival, you'd laugh at this display at your own risk, since only a truly cut-throat and competent business shark could get away with it.
And why not? I see flittering New Agers, plain-clothes Buddhists, work-out junkies and Renaissance-Romantics flowing around offices and shops all the time. Sluts and Beats and Badasses of all genders abound. At the very least, it would give you a much better chance of understanding your coworkers.
Plainly, you can't dress and act in extreme ways at most jobs, since working with others requires a mediated environment to some degree and so does safety. But, since most people work better and create fewer problems when they can dress and act comfortably, it makes sense to let them be who and what they are, even if that includes green-dyed hair or black-smudged eyes.
The standard of "business dress" is entirely outmoded, a remnant of an age when most Westerners aspired to be like everyone else around them. Now, when we claim to embrace the individual, why are we still stuffing workers into suits and ties and saying that jeans aren't acceptable "casual" wear for business? Long gone are the days when jeans were counter-culture or the clothing of manual laborers. Just as long gone are the days when women wore skirts even when cleaning the house or working in the field.
So, I say "embrace your inner Punk" and take a 'tude to work. Let's have National Bring Your Real Self to Work Day. Here's to the Busi-Goths storming the gates of Business!
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