Letting Go

“Will I get fired for wearing this?” I ask a roomful of college students. 

I’m a professor standing in front of my Tuesday afternoon ethics class at a private university in the American South. I’m dressed head-to-toe in athletic wear – Lululemon, specifically. Camouflage patterned tights under running shorts with reflective piping. A brightly colored shirt made of Recycled Polyester, Elastane (whatever that is), and odor-fighting X-Static® Nylon. The students have never seen me dressed like this, and I’ve never seen them-seeing-me dressed like this, either. But I smell great, and I’m not about to be fired. 

The students in the room agree. “No,” they answer without much deliberation. 

They know, instinctively, that if wearing athleisure to teach a college class is a workplace infraction, it probably isn’t a fireable infraction. And even if it is fireable, I probably wouldn’t be the one to get the pink slip. The last thing my university wants is a front-page story in The New York Times about an aggrieved professor who filed a lawsuit and inked an endorsement deal with Lululemon in the same week. 

Still, their muffled laughs and sideways glances betray an awareness that I’m doing something taboo for a university professor. I want them to explore that awareness and the unspoken codes of professionalism it reveals.

“How do you know I won’t get fired?” I ask. 

No one responds. 

“If wearing this is against the rules,” I add, “what rules would those be, exactly?”

Again, no one responds. The students don’t even know where to begin. 

I open a browser projected onto a screen at the front of the room and search my university’s name and “faculty handbook.” I open the PDF linked on the university’s Human Resources website and type “attire” into the search bar – no results. The students laugh. I type “clothing” into the search bar – two results. Now we’re getting somewhere. 

Result number one is this: 

The university provides insurance on the business property (books, calculators, typewriters, and other office equipment) personally owned by faculty members while within the premises of the university. Excluded from coverage are rare books, manuscripts, bills, currency, deeds, notes and securities, jewelry, furs, clothing, and other personal effects covered by a homeowner’s policy and not related to employment.  

Clothing is “not related to employment” – that’s interesting. Also, apparently all faculty own homes? Otherwise it would say “personal effects covered by a homeowner’s or renter’s policy.” Maybe this handbook doesn’t apply to adjuncts. 

Result number two is this: 

This Policy prohibits discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy), gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, genetic information, age, disability, or veteran status. …

Gender Expression: an external expression of and presentation of one’s gender through clothing, roles, mannerisms, etc. Gender expression does not necessarily align with gender identity. 

So, faculty are (legally) protected from discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender expression, including external expression through clothing. That’s a good thing. 

In both cases, the language from the faculty handbook concerns workers’ rights. In one case the handbook delimits insurance coverage for rightfully held property; in the other, it outlines a guarantee of the right to protection against harassment and discrimination. 

“What do you think of this?” I ask the room.

“It’s kind of boring,” one student says. “What’s the point?”

~~~

I type my university’s name into the browser again, this time with “staff handbook” added, and open a different PDF. The rules at my university are not the same for staff as they are for faculty. There are separate handbooks. 

“The faculty handbook doesn’t actually apply to me,” I say. “I’m an adjunct professor, which means that my hiring designation is staff, not faculty.” 

“We don’t know what that means,” someone says. 

“Let’s find out,” I reply.

I type “attire” into the staff handbook – three results, this time, all from the same passage: 

Workplace Attire: Workplace attire must be neat, clean, and appropriate to the work being performed in the setting in which work is performed. Supervisors should determine and communicate appropriate workplace attire for their staff; uniforms may be required for certain positions.

This passage isn’t about workers’ rights at all. It’s not about worker protections, either. It’s about authority and compliance. 

The language of the staff handbook is imperative rather than descriptive: “attire must be” is a demand; whereas “excluded from coverage” isn’t. The protections are gone, too. I search “clothing” in the staff handbook – no results. Apparently gender expression isn’t protected for staff in the same way it is for faculty. Or, at least, HR didn’t think those protections were important enough to include in the staff handbook. 

The language of the passage on workplace attire also delineates power, authority, and status. Supervisors have authority over staff. Someone, somewhere, has the authority to decide whether my Lululemon attire is “appropriate to work being performed.” Uniforms may be required for certain positions.

“What kind of positions are certain positions?” I ask the room. “Who is required to wear a uniform on this campus?”  

The students answer this question quickly: maintenance workers, bus drivers, and food service workers. They keep going: housekeepers, groundskeepers, construction workers, and parking attendants. Still more: security workers, movers, ushers, painters, lifeguards, and concession workers. 

The list of positions requiring uniforms is long, but I’m still not on it. That’s called status. 

Leigh Patel, professor at the University of Pittsburgh, writes about status in her 2021 book No Study Without Struggle. “Higher education,” Patel writes, “is predicated on individuals holding differential status so that many are competing for the limited and protected well-being afforded to higher status, reflected in salary and reputation.” 

As an adjunct professor, I’m one of many workers competing for the elusive rights and protections of regular rank faculty. In addition to reputation and salary (remember the “homeowner’s” line?), there are material protections uniquely reserved for faculty. In fact, all you have to do is search a few terms in the handbook to find them. 

But, as an adjunct professor, there are also many workers competing for the rights and protections of my position, too. I have my own status, reputation, and salary. I can wear Lululemon to class, while the workers who vacuum and empty trash bins (in the same room where I teach) after the building is closed to the public will be required to wear uniforms. If they are contract workers, even the diminished protections of the staff handbook may not apply. 

Hierarchies of power, status, and well-being pervade workplaces across all sectors of the contemporary economy, not simply higher education. Some groups receive affirmations of workplace protections, while others receive warnings about workplace compliance. Someone, somewhere, always has the power to decide. Why else do salary grades, org charts, and reporting structures always reflect the same shape – a pyramid? 

“The distinctions of who can be a teacher and who must be a learner is in keeping with coloniality,” Patel writes, “as a pervasive thematic ordering of people.” The contemporary workplace is nothing if not a highly coordinated pervasive thematic ordering of people. “Coloniality enacts this ordering through policies, laws, cultural practices, and knowledge production,” she adds, “all of which permeate access to material needs like potable water.”

Potable water? That’s exactly what I’d need after an intensive cardio session or particularly draining ethics lecture dressed in Lululemon garb. But if the water fountain isn’t working, I’ll have to look for someone in a uniform. 

~~~

“What does it mean when someone wears Lululemon?” I ask the students. They know, but they don’t want to say. 

Lululemon is the hallmark brand in a $100+ billion fashion category called athleisure. According to Jia Tolentino, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, athleisure is “exercise gear that you pay too much money for.” Fair enough. But it’s not just expensive. It’s also demanding. Lululemon signals the wearer’s intention to optimize their body – to work until their body reaches its fullest potential.

There’s a catch. You can’t fit into Lululemon clothing without a certain kind of body, and you can’t achieve a certain kind of body without fitting into Lululemon clothing, according to Tolentino. (“The founder of the company once said that ‘certain women’ aren’t meant to wear his brand,” she reports.) In other words, “The real trick of athleisure is the way it can physically suggest that you were made to do this – that you’re the kind of person who thinks that putting in expensive hard work for high-functioning, maximally attractive consumer existence is about as good a way to pass your time on earth as there is.” 

In any given classroom where I’m teaching, 15% – 40% of the students are wearing at least one article of Lululemon clothing. Aside from Nike, which sponsors the university’s athletic teams and produces its officially licensed merchandise, Lululemon has been far and away the most commonly worn brand in my classrooms for the last fifteen years. This is in part because I teach at a private university with a price tag over $300,000 for an undergraduate degree. It is also because messages of optimization are everywhere in higher education, not just private universities, and it’s easy enough to convert pressure to optimize your mind into pressure to optimize, well, everything, including your body.  

In fact, let’s take the paragraph above about Lululemon and replace a few of the words. 

There’s a catch. You can’t fit into an elite university without a certain kind of mind, and you can’t achieve a certain kind of mind without attending an elite university. (The founder of the university once said that “certain people” aren’t meant to study here.) In other words, the real trick of higher education is the way it can subtly suggest that you were made to do this – that you’re the kind of person who thinks that putting in expensive hard work for high-functioning, maximally productive intellectual existence is about as good a way to pass your time on earth as there is.

Higher education will have a deep spiritual kinship with Lululemon, so long as its principal project is optimization and productivity is the measure of worth. But the power of optimization spans far beyond the walls of colleges and universities. 

“That perfection remains always beyond, something we have to strive for and can never attain, does not diminish the power of the ideal; indeed it may even strengthen it,” Tolentino writes. 

Psychologist Miriam Greenspan puts it slightly differently: “Transform yourself or be damned, the voice of despair seems to say.” 

~~~

I am trying to teach my students to reject the project of self-optimization. I don’t think that acquiring high-functioning, maximally productive minds is as good a way to pass their time on earth as there is. I try not to make it the best way to pass their time in my class. 

Self-optimization is about mastery, whether it’s mastery of the body, mastery of the mind, or mastery of workplace performance. Mastery, in turn, becomes about policing – deciding who is allowed to do what, when, and with what consequences. Rejecting self-optimization – in my expectations for myself and for my students – means trying to let go of both mastery and policing. 

I try to let go of mastery by taking risks in the classroom. Little risks like wearing Lululemon to class and asking students to interrogate our social norms. Bigger risks, too, like being honest with students about the precarity of my adjunct position, the insecurities I feel about my aging body, or the moral entanglement of teaching ethics at a university with a $300,000+ price tag. Sometimes the students match my honesty with their own, and the conversation takes a deeper turn. Sometimes they don’t. 

Sometimes little risks become bigger risks. One student stayed after class to say, “Talking about bodies in class isn’t a joke for me. Your little dress-up game wasn’t funny.” I’ll have to think about that. Maybe it’s time to retire this lesson. 

Sometimes a risk leads to failure. 

I try to let go of policing, too. Some students say that my classes are “easy,” because I do not surprise them with pop quizzes or force competition by grading on a curve. Others find my classes disorienting, because their standards for self-assessment and comparison with peers aren’t as readily available. One year a student said to me, “How can we have grades in this class? What standards would you even use?” 

When you let go of mastery, you lose your capacity to rank and classify. You lose your foothold on status. This is deeply threatening to a world where status is everything. You also lose your foothold on policing, because you’ve given up the authority of judging others and assigning consequences. This undermines the power of the grade, yes, but also the power of performance reviews, compliance mandates, and year-end bonuses. 

My aim, in the end, is to invite my students to consider their own entanglement in systems of optimization and mastery, policing and consequences, because those systems will permeate every aspect of the professions they pursue after college. Long after they’ve forgotten my class, I hope they’ll remain skeptical of that ever-present status pyramid. I hope they’ll remember to notice which workers receive guaranteed protections and which receive compliance mandates. I hope they will occasionally read the handbooks. 

Higher education may never let go of its obsession with status, power, and classifying people. It may self-optimize for all eternity. But I’m trying to let go. I’m trying to optimize less. 

If you’re interested in trying, too, maybe we could go for a walk sometime? Just to get some fresh air. 

I already know what I’ll wear.