The Politics of Dressing To Impress

In high school I was basically the empress of interviews.

My senior spring was saturated with them. I had an inordinate amount of fun participating in scholarship interview weekends and hilariously staged “group discussions.” At some point I just started applying for scholarships with the secret hope that I would have the chance to sit in front of some adults and—in the words of two black goddesses—feel myself for about an hour.

The kind of self-indulgence necessary to outright enjoy interviews is wholly uncharacteristic of me. And, for the record, I’ve lost most of the interview mojo I had last spring.

Here, I’m learning, spring is the season of frenzying over summer opportunities. Another wave of interviews begins. I’m not sure where my interview confidence went, but I think I may know where it came from.

Before senior year there was one thing I could never really get on board with—interview clothes.

I’m not graceful. I have a lot of trouble walking in heels. I’m not tiny. A lot of “professional” looking dresses fit me in ways that are seen as unprofessional. And it’s damn hard to tame my hair into any weird configuration that is both acceptably demure and not painful.

At debate tournaments throughout high school I wore essentially the same outfit every weekend—a tight bun, a long pencil skirt, short heels, and a sweater. It was what I could afford and it was what fit me without making me look in any way like what the college counselors at my school would have called “suggestive” or “inappropriate.” It’s what I could get away with wearing. I couldn’t help but always think that the guys I debated against looked more comfortable, and more like they belonged.

Eventually I stopped worrying about getting away with things. I realized that I felt much more comfortable in a button down and a blazer. I started shopping for bowties. In turn I became more confident—and frankly way better looking—as a debater and interviewee. There isn’t anything particularly unique about this narrative of mine, but I think there may be something important behind it.

What I’m talking about is bro-appropriation. Bropropriation, if you will.

I was getting ready for an interview, remarking to my friends about how much like a “bro” I looked, when we all took a moment to consider what that meant. Soon, we all started talking about “Paris Is Burning.”

In this documentary about ball culture in 1980s New York, Dorian Corey remarks:

“Black people have a hard time getting anywhere, and those that do are usually straight. In a ballroom you can be anything you want. You're not really an executive but you're looking like an executive. You're showing the straight world that I can be an executive if I had the opportunity because I can look like one, and that is like a fulfillment.”

As a queer black woman, it is hard for me to walk around Harvard and pretend that I have always belonged here, or that I even do now. Of course, this isn’t the only place where this is true, but an interview in an old Harvard dining hall on a snowy New England day, all exposed brick and wood floors and monolithic mass of Bean Boots certainly exemplifies the idea. Here, even when I am wearing clothes that I think make me feel and look powerful, clothes that show that “I can be an executive if I have the opportunity,” there are gazes from tall white boys in clothes more expensive than mine that make it feel like I’m just playing dress up.

Interviewing involves both a literal and metaphorical putting on of clothes.

I think my high school interviewing confidence came from the fact that I had become very good at packaging myself, and eventually I realized how to literally package myself as well as I metaphorically did. I was a kid, I was sitting in front of wealthy, powerful adults, and I was saying, “I’m smart and I don’t have money. People like me have had a hard time getting anywhere. But look, I can be an executive if I have the opportunity.”

It’s not okay that there is a way for a woman to “dress like” a man, or for a not-straight person to dress like a straight person, to succeed. The concept of “dress like” shouldn't exist in the first place. But there is a certain power in looking at the rich, preppy white boy at the head of the room and instead of thinking about all of the barriers I have to get past that he doesn’t even know exist, rather to think, “I’m going to dress like him—no, like me. This way of dressing is not his anymore. I’m going to invade his country club and shake his hand as firm as the next guy.”

Maybe it’s just a cute outfit. Or maybe it’s a way to call into question symbols of power and privilege. Maybe appropriation has worked the other way around for long enough, and it’s time to turn the tables.

Or maybe belting a potato sack and looking better than designer is just self-empowerment at its simplest and finest.

Madison E. Johnson ’18 lives in Wigglesworth Hall. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.