SOS: Sartorial Slippage and Social Dissolution (or: It's Worth a Try)

While doing research for an upcoming conference, your correspondent has learned of disturbing trends. Dear reader, it is my duty to warn you: what may begin as innocent fashion iconoclasm may eventually pit you against every norm we hold dear in society.

How many of us can say we have looked into our closets without ever being tempted to substitute, just once, a T-shirt for a crisp and freshly pressed proper shirt under our regulation blazers?

If you are subject to such tendencies, it is not too late to get help. The first and most important step is awareness. Beware of insidious buzzwords such as "casual" and "comfortable," which lure impressionable people into disruptive and even dangerous lapses of judgment. Arm yourself with information. Study and know your enemy.

We recommend The Second Skin: An Interdisciplinary Study of Clothing, in which the insightful Prof. Marilyn J. Horn notes that some individuals, their minds undoubtedly corrupted by a climate of sartorial self-indulgence, go so far as to "choose to oppose group norms by being negativistic and rebellious toward the established code of dress." She cites the alarming case of "the young man who arrives at the formal dance in Bermuda shorts and sports shirt. His aggressive and exhibitionistic tendencies are satisfied by the adoption of antithetical patterns of dress" (Houghton Mifflin, 1968, p. 203). Not a pretty thought, is it?

Steel yourself against the siren call of sweats and sneakers. Down that road anarchy and madness surely lie.

Note to the editors: If it were that easy to satisfy our aggressive tendencies, every single untenured person at the APA, and quite a few tenured ones would be wearing those bermuda shorts and sports shirts. Now that I think about it, maybe aggression and exhibitionism do explain APA fashion (excuse the oxymoron).