Learning to Wear the White Collar: Family and Class Origins in Dressing for Corporate Work

• In Event: 111 - Regular Session. Class Cultures

Abstract

Based on interview accounts of 71 male white-collar workers in 3 U.S. cities, this presentation explores the ways in which families of various class positions socialize their children into primarily middle-class norms of dress, with a special focus on fathers and sons. The men I interviewed highlighted the role of family in the crafting of their self-presentation and dress in the corporate workplace. This view supports sociologists’ assertion that social class is not just a function of family income, but that it also has a cultural component and is an identity that is performed. These class performances always involve the body, dress, and appearance. Research participants told stories about class mobility as well as class reproduction; moving up or down in class status either in one’s lifetime or across generations made men acutely aware of differing expectations for bodily self-presentation in different social strata. The men’s interview accounts show that inter-generational transmission of dress skills and cultural capital (specialized knowledge) related to presenting a socially acceptable masculine appearance was influenced not only by the historical period, but by their father’s or grandfather’s race/ethnicity, class position, and gender ideology. In order to fully understand the mechanisms of social class reproduction and the construction of a white-collar habitus, it is important to consider the intimate space of the home and family, and the even more intimate site of the dressed body.

Author

• Erynn Masi de Casanova, University of Cincinnati