ARMCHAIR ARCHIVES – Losing the battle over a summer dress code for reporters

 I expect the word “dinosaur” will come to some readers’ minds when they go through the following column, which was first published in the Kamloops Daily News on June 3, 1983, headlined ‘Are E.T. running shoes OK, Mel?” Standards do change, after all, and I’m also aware that my own sense of fashion has not always been outstanding. However, I would contend that reporters these days could still stand to brush up on their standards of dress.

SOMETHING HAPPENS to people’s clothing when the weather heats up. Besides coming off, I mean. It becomes, well, highly informal.

People get the idea that since it’s hot outside they can wear any darn thing they please. Journalists are not particularly impressive dressers at any time, as I’ve mentioned before.

Come the summer, any semblance of conformity in dress goes out the window. So, when I saw some alarming trends on my own staff, I issued a summer wear addendum to my otherwise somewhat permissive dress code.

I’m glad cooler weather has returned, because the past week has been hell around here.

There is, of course, a basic human rights issue. I’ve been told from time to time (by reporters) that if a reporter wants to show up to a public meeting looking like he’d just returned from shoveling the compost, that’s his privilege.

I’m not a dress code tyrant, by any means. For one thing, I buy most of my own clothes off the rack at a local cut-rate department store. But there are limits. So when one staff member wandered in wearing thongs, a T-shirt and some kind of strange trousers with loops and straps and pockets and snaps that wouldn’t quit, it was time to crack down.

Thongs and T-shirts were out. I’d originally toyed with the idea of banning foot nudity in toto, but when several staff members raised their feet to display various types of sandals, I retreated.

However, I held firm on cutoffs, though allowing dress shorts, preferably Bermudas (we were, after all, in the middle of a heat wave).

And I insisted that women’s legs be clean-shaven. (I fully realize that some misguided women these days think it liberated to display hairy armpits and legs, but this grosses me out).

Immediately, I was into a sexual discrimination charge. Why should men be allowed to have hairy legs and not women? And what about people with blonde hair? Why, you could barely even see it, I was told.

I compromised: if you can’t tell within a foot of a person’s leg that it’s hairy, I said, it can stay hairy.

This got me into more trouble. One female reporter wrote me the following proposed revision: “I suggest changing ‘one foot’ to ‘reasonable distance.’ If anyone (on the job) thinks they’re getting within one foot of my legs they can expect a kick in the you-know-where.”

Another staffer asked: “What if your legs are so hairy that it looks like you’re wearing pants? If you shave your legs below the knees so it looks like shorts is that okay?”

And yet another reporter, apparently confused about the one-foot rule, was of the opinion that “yes, this is acceptable, as long as the wearer is careful to observe the regulation requiring the wearing of a shoe.”

To demonstrate my flexibility, I approved the wearing of summer dresses. But every female staffer in the office suddenly got very concerned when I delicately asked that certain undergarments not be visible through the fabric.

Kamloops women have a thing about not checking to see what there is to see under their thin little cotton dresses. It can be an ugly experience for those who have to look at them.

And the male reporters, naturally, wanted to know if they could wear summer dresses, too.

Definite ‘nos’ included, in addition to the thongs and T-shirts, punk rock hair and wet hair. While I appreciate reporters trying to make it into work on time in the morning, I also appreciate it if they get up in time to dry their hair after showering, and maybe give it a token swipe with a comb.

I neglected to include blue hair or pink hair in the hair ban, and I hear rumors about that.

Also definitely under the ban are wildly plunging necklines and garments revealing an unreasonable amount of skin. This guideline came about when one reporter, suffering under a breakdown in the air conditioning, disrobed from the waist up. Unfortunately, it was one of the male reporters.

The backshop somehow heard about the skin ban and lodged an immediate protest.

The problem with guidelines is that you can’t cover everything, so to speak. Having listed what’s not allowed, there is an assumption that everything else is allowable. I am daily receiving requests regarding tube tops, E.E. running shoes, dirty finger nails, fortrel pedal pushers, female lip hair, pasties, pierced noses, and pingpong balls.

I’m sorry I ever mentioned it.

Mel Rothenburger has been writing about Kamloops since 1970.