In the past two weeks two separate students have informed me that two different combinations of my shirts and ties didn’t match.
How deflating–but not really. Male teachers in my district are essentially required to wear ties, an accessory I find incredibly silly, clownish, inane, nonsensical, and dangerous (police officers only wear clip-ons). My quiet protest of this de facto policy has been an intentional but modest mismatching of my wardrobe’s contents, and so I deserve the recent student observations.
I should qualify the intentionality of my rebellion, since when you get down right to it, the vast majority of my shirts and ties are not too carefully rescued from the local thrift store. Only a few of my many outfit options actually have matching potential. My rebellion, therefore, relies heavily not on my deliberate choices but more so on my hesitation to wear the same three or four outfits–the few that do match–over and over again.
(That said, I confess having a Monday outfit, which last week I happened to wear twice. A student asked me, “Why do you wear the same clothes all the time?”)
And sometimes I really do try to match. “Does this combination work?” I parade in front of M.
“It’s as good as any other,” she often says. In other words, she’s told me, “matching is relative.”
I wonder if my subtle civil disobedience will ever merit comment from my colleagues or superiors. I’m guessing nothing will ever come of it, since it’s not as obvious as the teacher at another school who protests by wearing the fat part of his ties short and the skinny parts long and claims that the powers that be can make rules about dress code but not fashion sense.
Instead, everyone just probably thinks I lack judgment in vestment.
