I was met with this greeting as I entered my Business and Technical Communication class on Monday evening. I immediately smiled and attempted to start class as usual, but another student interjected,
“I know this is off topic, but you look really fly today, Ms. Echols. I mean you’re usually on point, but today you are giving me life.”
I can’t deny that it felt good to hear my students applauding my fashion choices, but the conversations that followed really gave me life.
Throughout the semester, we’ve composed several emails, drafts of cover letters and resumes, memos, and business reports. We’ve also engaged interesting conversations about language, ethics, respectability politics, and countless other topics related to business and technical communication.
This past Monday, we talked about hair and attire. Although we’d discussed these topics before in regards to distinctions between business and business casual attire and how these topics should be considered for interviews and presentations, before Monday, we’d never discussed them in such critical ways that used me as the subject. As I stood before my students, as I had done for weeks, I allowed them to use my hair and attire as an example to engage what is deemed acceptable and presentable for business communication/presentation.
Their eloquent responses completely reshaped my lesson plans, but I went with it. After several minutes of dialogue, we had a guiding question for our discussion…
“Are cornrows unprofessional, or are the simply unacceptable by some people’s standards?”
I immediately thought of so many responses, and even though of my siSTAR’s recent post about KimK-West’s “Boxer Braids.” Instead of using my authority to shape my student’s conversation, I stood before them, allowing my presence to be the lesson.
Here are some thoughts they shared…
“When I go to work, sometimes I braid my hair on the sides and use the braids kinda like a ponytail. No one says that’s wrong or even looks at me strange. I know it’s because I’m white, but that’s really ridiculous considering the only reason I wanted to braid my hair is because I saw it on television or in a magazine.”
“You don’t look like any of my professors. Not even my black ones. I can tell that you think about what you’re going to wear just as much as you think about what you’re going to teach. That gives me something to aspire to.”
“I prefer teachers look like this. I mean you should be you. It makes me want to be me.”
“I think it’s cool and all that you dress like a hipster. You have on a fur vest, come on. But I also know that if you went upstairs to interview for dean or president, you wouldn’t wear that. But because you know what to do and when to do it proves a lot about how smart and dope you are.”
“Because I’m not from the US I think the conversation about hair and attire is different. I think that even in my trying to be (air quotes) myself, it’s still going to be looked at differently. No matter how many American women (air quotes) go natural, what I see as traditional and professional is not by American standards."
(Ok, there were so many other comments, but these stood out in my memory...I actually wrote them down during the discussion.)
We didn’t do much of what I planned for that class meeting because the conversation was so rich. By the end of the discussion we complicated fashion's love/hate relationship with the business world, racial stigmas associated with hair and attire, class based connections to hair and attire,and where/when certain fashion decisions are considered (un)professional and/or (un)acceptable.
There is so much in the responses I share here, but as an evolving black woman and instructor, I learned so much from this class meeting. Here are a few…
- My students are super smart!
- Continue to be intentional in all that you do. People (your students) are watching.
- Go with the flow…often! Beautiful things might happen.
- We need to have more conversations like this…in my classes and in other spaces.
Peace.
-kle
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