Social aspects of clothing: Encyclopedia II - Social aspects of clothing - Dress codes

Social aspects of clothing - Dress codes

Dress codes may apply:

• by law
• for employees, pupils/students, etc. - sometimes a uniform; sometimes depending on the day, see Casual Friday; see also international standard business attire
• for customers, e.g. for a disco, nightclub, casino, or more relaxed rules (e.g. shoes required, and not bare chested) in shops and restaurants
• on special parties; sometimes a special kind of clothes is the theme of the party
• in social life in general

Social aspects of clothing - Legal dress code

Almost universally nudity in a public place is illegal, except in special nudist areas, which exist in fairly many countries. (However, among some peoples full nudity is accepted or the norm.) For woman bare breasts are also often illegal; however, see also topfree equality. In a non-public place nudity tends to be forbidden if another person is unwillingly confronted with it.

Wearing only underwear is sometimes also illegal, and in some countries even less bare skin may already be illegal, especially for women.

Cross-dressing may also be illegal, especially a man wearing women's clothing.

In Tonga it is illegal for men to appear in public without shirt.

See also indecent exposure, trousers and the law.

Social aspects of clothing - Other dress codes

Dress codes function on certain social occasions and for certain jobs. A school or a military institution may require specified uniforms; if it allows the wearing of plain clothes it may place restrictions on their use. A bouncer of a disco or nightclub may judge visitors' clothing and refuse entrance to those not clad according to specified or intuited requirements: for example an establishment may not allow the wearing of sport shoes.

A formal or white tie dress code typically means Tail-coats for men and full-length evening dresses for women. Semi-formal has a much less precise definition but typically means an evening jacket and tie for men (known as black tie) and a dress for women. Lounge suit also known as Business casual typically means not wearing jeans or track suits, but wearing instead collared shirts, and more country trousers (not black, but more relaxed, including things such as corduroy). Casual typically just means clothing for the torso, legs and shoes.

Transparent or semi-transparent clothing can play with the boundaries of dress-codes regarding modesty, for example: in a wet T-shirt contest.

Dress codes usually set forth a lower bound on body covering. However, sometimes it can specify the opposite, for example, in UK gay jargon, dress code, means people who dress in a militaristic manner. Dress code nights in nightclubs, and elsewhere, are deemed to specifically target people who have militaristic fetishes (e.g. leather/skinhead men).

Setting a dress code can often lead to great embarrassment. One particularly famous example is that of UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, who asked the Bank of England's board to wear lounge suits to their annual dinner, a highly prestigious occasion, as an act of modernism in tune with New Labour thinking (they usually wore White Tie). However, he had not reckoned with their determination not to kow-tow, and when sat at dinner, he was the only person not dressed in White Tie, to his humiliation, and the glee of the UK broadsheets.

See also shoe etiquette, mourning, sharia.

Social aspects of clothing - No shoes no shirt no service

Whereas in much of Europe, and in particular in Italy, dressing well is standard behaviour, in America the norm is for a more dressed down appearance. The aphorism "no shoes, no shirt, no service" captures their commonly promulgated dress code, and sometimes appears on signs posted at commercial establishments such as restaurants and shopping malls. Another common aphorism claims "this store is not a beach", a phrase recited almost automatically by store employees when encountering someone who does not meet the minimum standards of body covering, modesty, decency, or the like. Beaches and urban beaches push these boundaries, as people wander from a beachlike setting to stores and restaurants nearby.

Many of the stores and restaurants on or near beaches have such dress codes but do not enforce them. For example, the Sunnyside Cafe, located at the Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion in Toronto, Canada, often does not enforce the "shirts, shoes" dress code.

The "no shoes, no shirt" slogan appears so prevalently in some settings that it has become the target of mockery and flagrant disregard. Groups that don't like dress codes, such as barefooters, often deliberately disregard this specific dress code, as a form of breaching experiment or beaching experiment. Such action research, as well as activism, including deliberate violation by lawyers (deliberately violating no-shirts and no-shoes laws), is becoming more common. Musicians have also mocked this dress code, for instance Kenny Chesney sings the song No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problems.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Dress codes", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki