Legal Commentary

We?ve all heard the expression ?clothes make the man.?  But do clothes also make the professor?  Especially if the professor looks young enough to be a student, or is female, or a person of color, or LGBT, or some combination of the above?  And am I the only one, at the start of yet another school year, thinking about this?

One of my favorite quotes from an article I wrote about appearance and the law, Cross Dressing and the Criminal, comes from Allison Lurie.  In The Language of Clothes, she wrote:  ?For thousands of years human beings have communicated with one another first in the language of dress.  Long before I am near enough to talk to you on the street, in a meeting, or at a party, you announce your sex, age and class to me through what you are wearing?and very possibly give me important information (or misinformation) as to your occupation, origin, personality, opinions, tastes, sexual desires, and current mood.  I may not be able to put what I observe into words, but I register the information unconsciously; and you simultaneously do the same for me.  By the time we meet and converse we have already spoken to each other in an older and more universal tongue.?  

Given the importance of this first impression, am I the only one that obsesses at the start of the school year about what to wear on the first day of class, down to what color tie to wear?  And I?m curious.  Given that professors who don?t naturally look professorial?I think you know what I mean?often have to do extra work to command respect and authority, is it mostly those professors who worry about clothing and first impressions?  (In the extreme, are we the ones that take Rogers v. American Airlines and Jespersen v. Harrah?s Operating Co. personally, and keep Dress for Success and its targeted variations in the back of our minds?) And here?s my final question.  I?m still relatively young, and I don?t like trousers with elastic waistbands.  As I get older, will I succumb and actually find elastic waistband trousers appealing?  Not that I have anything against waistband trousers . . .