When we flew to Saint Johns in 1967 Mom wore a nice dress, Dad wore a suit and I and my brother wore sports coats. The family could have been called lower middle class by a kindly observer. Now people dress on flights in a manner that people on a Greyhound bus circa 1967 would have viewed as shocking. The Great Slobbification.
True
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
A favorite occasional pastime of ours is watching classic Perry Mason episodes (1959-1967). It was unthinkable then for men to exit the house in less than a suit/suit jacket, slacks, and tie, and women were expected to wear a dress with an outer coat (even in perennial 70 degree LA).
Today? Oh my.
The meaning of clothing changed. It’s not that important anymore. Can think that’s good, or bad, but it’s an is; objectively, as recently as the 90s, dressing formally (OK, business casual) at work correlated to better output. In recent comparisons of offices, though, the places with t-shirts and jeans got more done.
That said, it’s a good thing that flying is no more important than taking a bus. Ease of movement is almost as important as ease of communication, culturally.
The meaning of clothing changed. It’s not that important anymore. Can think that’s good, or bad, but it’s an is; objectively, as recently as the 90s, dressing formally (OK, business casual) at work correlated to better output. In recent comparisons of offices, though, the places with t-shirts and jeans got more done.
We will have to agree to disagree Foxfier. This is all a piece with people wearing prison tatoos, piercing metal through their skin, men having ball caps perpetually glued to their heads, women shopping in what looks like pajamas, the ubiquitous use of profanity, people having cell phone conversations at the top of their lungs in public, etc. A majority of people have no sense of time or place and manners which would have made a sailor blush circa 1960.
It was unthinkable then for men to exit the house in less than a suit/suit jacket, slacks, and tie, and women were expected to wear a dress with an outer coat (even in perennial 70 degree LA).
It is true that people used to have a regard for appearances they no longer do. I never saw anyone in informal clothing in a church prior to about 1987. Ordinary men in public wearing business attire 24/7 is a world in which I’ve never lived. My father’s contemporaries prior to about 1970 were careful to keep their hair trimmed, did not wear T-shirts anywhere outside the house, generally did not wear short pants in public except in athletic settings, and seldom if ever wore baseball caps unless they were in select occupations. Coat and tie on a Saturday afternoon? No.
The few cases I was on an airplane prior to 1970 we were in Sunday best. A few things: (1) my mother was a very appearance-oriented woman and (2) you didn’t get on one all that often. Have a gander at government data on passenger-miles and passenger-trips flown ca. 1960. Someone from a professional-managerial class household might expect to have one round-trip per year; someone from a wage-earning family one every 15 years or so.
The really sorry things in recent years have been: (1) disrespect for ceremony, (2) the thoughtless use of profanity in mixed company, (3) lack of reserve in discussing sexual topics, (4) excess weight, (5) T-shirts, (6) tattoos. Improvements: (1) hairdressers and their marks are less likely to treat hair as if it were sculpture, (2) things like bare midriffs and exposed cleavage seem less common, (3) bizarro business like coloring your hair magenta or sticking studs in strange places is less common.
A related tic that refuses to disappear is giving your children silly names, ugly names, or idiosyncratically spelled names.
In recent comparisons of offices, though, the places with t-shirts and jeans got more done.
Controlling for sector? Non ci credo.
A majority of people have no sense of time or place and manners which would have made a sailor blush circa 1960.
Goodness, yes. That’s due to the active efforts to destroy manners and boundaries, most famously promoted by Alinsky.
Controlling for sector?
They’re different offices in the same organization.
And yes, they kept switching back and forth, because they keep getting supervisors who are sure that t-shirts are morally inferior to polo shirts. Eventually they had to stop the BS clothing games because it was causing a backup in output.
I have been told that, once upon a time, it was not uncommon for people to go to the polls, (in person, no less), in their Sunday best. Respect for the solemnity of the occasion.
I don’t know about suits and ties, but I tell my sons when I entered the business world in the early 90s, it was still pretty much mandatory that if you were in any type of white collar setting, it was suit and tie, or at least dress shirt and tie. In terms of daily living, my parents still dressed well when going out, though not sports jackets or dresses. Mom would wear nice slacks and Dad a polo with jeans or something like dressier trousers. But then as a train engineer, he also wore polos and jeans, so not much changed with him.. I had an uncle who never wore jeans in his life. For my part I typically dressed in a sports jacket and dress shirt with jeans when in class or going out and about, it being the late 80s. But that made me the glaring exception, as the MTV era had brought trashy rock costumes into the mainstream with many of my peers wanting to look like Madonna or Bon Jovi or AC/DC, as the case may be.
In 1966, in the movie “The Endless Summer”, they showed the two Surfers going to the airport wearing sport coats and ties, carrying their surf boards.
You know, theres benefit with school children should wearing school uniforms. All kids wear uniforms where I’m from- regardless of what school they go to. School uniforms teach children the importance of pride in presentation. And there are rules how and what you are allowed to wear at most average achools. My 5 year old wears a tie to school and I’ve only recently learn to tie one. He hates wearing it, and would rather a t-shirt and jeans. He’ll get used to it.
Mind you the uniform of the average Australian on the weekend is shorts, t-shirt and flip flops. Even to Church.
And yes agree tattoo sleeves are ridiculous unless you are of Maori decent IMHO.
School uniforms are starting to return to public schools in the States.
I tell my sons when I entered the business world in the early 90s, it was still pretty much mandatory that if you were in any type of white collar setting, it was suit and tie, or at least dress shirt and tie.
And when you told ’em ‘clippers, setting no. 3’, they ignored you entirely.
“And when you told ’em ‘clippers, setting no. 3’, they ignored you entirely.”
Heh. That was a battle I wasn’t going to fight. I figured let them have that one in a day when many of their peers had all manner of body piercing, tattoos, and dyed hair and clothing that would make Ziggy Stardust blush. And I notice they’ve grown out of the longer hair period, as I figured they would. Plus, while I never had 80s long hair, I tended to wear my own hair to the collar in my younger days, so couldn’t say much.
Grunge, tatoos piercings etc all just seem disrespectful of the dignity of the human person- the wearer and the viewer alike.