Even after three internships, numerous interviews, several networking events and a healthy employee discount, I have yet to lose my J.Crew blazer v-card.
As a J.Crew employee, I have seen the ceremonial “buying-baby’s-first-blazer outing” time and time again. To those parents and children who have left our pinstriped halls with a heavy suiting bag and significantly lighter wallet, mazel tov.
But while I understand the J.Crew blazer – heck, I respect it – I refuse to give into buying those pinstriped shoulder pads.
Some say I should just give it up. After all, everybody’s doing it. Even still, I cannot help but think my prudish approach to business professionalism is actually the best professional choice I could make.
My adviser definitely disagrees, as her take on the “student professional” is the kind of business school poster child who has a 401k by sophomore year and a natural body odor of legal pads.
After their parents drove them from the maternity ward straight to J.Crew, they were off scheduling their own dentist appointments and memorizing their Social Security number both forward and backward.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have our “professional students,” who wear gray sweat suits as if it’s their job and think 401k is the name of some overpriced craft beer. Waking up five minutes before class, they realize last night’s Netflix binge left laptop burns across their thighs and a spilled midnight snack commingling in their bed sheets.
Two types of professionalism stand here – our pinstriped superstar as the wayward angel on our left shoulder and our sweatsuit sleeper as the path-veering devil on our right.
Sigmund Freud’s model of the human psyche mirrors these differences, labeling our self-demanding angels as the human “superego” and pleasure-seeking devil as the human “id.” Together, the psyche represents our system of human behavior, or in this case, our system of professionalism.
Firm handshakes, clean cover letters and conversations that end with, “Let’s connect on LinkedIn,” all stem from our superego-angel’s demands in our ear. Act mature, pretend like your life is together, reference some Wall Street Journal article in conversation and keep your personal life out of it.
But while all of these behaviors represent what it means to be professional, none of them represent what it means to be human.
We give the devil on our shoulder a bad rap, but is the idea of acting from our id’s natural human instincts really so bad? After all, acting human is a great way to establish any relationship, professional or otherwise.
Sure, we need a certain amount of that angel’s voice to correct the grip in our handshake and spelling errors in our emails.
But, we will only be able to obtain these professional qualities, the ones that actually matter, when the business world stops criticizing the length of our business skirts.
So, when the professional world already depends so much on one shoulder’s standards and perfection, why not favor the other shoulder’s humanity and authenticity when it comes to dress?
I say ignore the pinstriped angel in your ear, and as for the J.Crew suit, screw it.
