Shoes and Self-Respect: An Exploration of the Frock Conscious
“Vain trifles as they may seem clothes have more important offices than merely to keep us warm, they change our view of the world and the world’s view of us” – Virginia Woolf, Orlando
I’ve only become vaguely aware of this in recent years, but there appears to be a great deal of rules governing what we can and cannot wear. How much and how little we put on our bodies seems intuitively tied to self-respect. Don’t wear sweatpants to a date. Don’t wear your bikini to class. Do wear shoes in a restaurant. The rules are ever shifting and depend on the particular context we find ourselves in; they exist because what we put on our body reflects our identity. Virginia Woolf termed this phenomenon the “Frock Conscious” and used clothes as a tool in her novels to convey character shifts or show unique personalities.
I once was in an uber with a boy I barely knew who said he found backpacks on girls to be highly unattractive– ergo, I’ve observed an abundance of boys ambling around campus slung with backpacks, but girls often opt instead for a purse bulging with books, postures bent unevenly under the weight. Why we strain our backs and corrupt our gait is exactly to do with the Frock Conscious; we don’t wear backpacks in order to preserve our femininity, the secret power we have over men like the one in my Uber to attract and seduce without uttering a word. If we don’t respect the rules of the Frock Conscious, we don’t respect ourselves.
I’m bad at following rules. I spent my childhood wearing as little clothes as possible; as a toddler this meant nothing, then evolved to encompass underwear, t-shirts, shorts, loose rompers, and the occasional pair of flip flops when entering a restaurant. Clothes meant nothing to me besides being a possible hindrance to all the activities I wanted to do in the day: Could I run in these pants? How easy would it be to take this dress off and jump in the water? Is it absolutely necessary to wear shoes today?
I first began to develop clarity of Frock Conscious at private school. We wore light blue button ups, crested blazers, knee high socks, and a kilt that caused undying contention in the five years I attended school there. Teachers walked around armed in rulers they would push up against the legs of girls to ensure the hem rested no more than four inches above the knee. We hiked up our skirts in defiance but still got nervous on the stairs whether someone behind us was peering at our ass. We felt a strong urge to rebel against the ridiculousness of the ruler but also a secret fear about what the length of our skirts could suggest about us as a person. This is also Frock Conscious: a push and pull between the need to express oneself and to comply with the norms of a community. Clothing acts as a token of entry to particular groups; to defy fashion conventions is to enter dangerous territory in which we must define ourselves. We become unsure of how people might perceive the clothes we put on our body, if there is a secret message woven into the shirt we picked out bleary eyed from the laundry this morning.
I’m curious to know if I embodied the shame around skirt length because I never wore a kilt, opting instead for gray trousers that dragged on the hallway, collecting dirt on the hem and earning me the (arbitrary) nickname of Anne Frank. I stole thick hoodies from my brothers’ closets and my mother’s oversized dresses. I covered my body because I didn’t want it to define my thoughts, soul and identity,: though my modest choice of dress sent a message in its own right; people who met me assumed I was prudish or insecure, or an unfortunate mixture of these two qualities.
At Berkeley I relish in wearing very few clothes. The weather is much warmer than my home in Canada, and on hot days I skip class to wear a bikini to the beach. I like wearing things that allow my arms and legs to soak in the sun.
I used to get nervous wearing short skirts. My friend told me short skirts were designed to flash one’s underwear, and I shouldn’t worry should this event occur. Although her advice may apply to the darkened, beer blurred rooms of Tap Haus, I wonder if it is appropriate in the library: where your thighs stick to the seat, and I use a sweater to cover my ass when I sit down. I recall having a serious conversation with my friend atin the glade but being unable to stand up afterwards without fear of exposing my underwear and rendering all my words ridiculous. I still like wearing short skirts, but I wear them conscious of how they might reflect on me as a person.
I also like wearing no shoes. My feet have developed a thick callus that allows me to walk on glass or climb the rough bark of a tree without injury. I like to think I use my feet as they were designed; to traverse every terrain on earth from the rock-strewn paths of the Fire Trails to the needle littered sidewalks of Shattuck. Most do not agree with my choice.
My first semester at Berkeley I experimented with not wearing shoes. I showed up barefoot at a frat party hoping no one would notice. Of course, everyone noticed; faces flashed in disgust, people approached me asking if I needed help finding my shoes, voices clothed in reproach, thinking I was too drunk to take proper care of myself. I had blatantly violated the rules of Frock Conscious and in that showed a lack of self-respect.
Joan Didion writes about Self Respect in an essay published in Vogue. She defined the lack of self-respect as the alienation of the self; of being so attune to the needs and expectations of other people we are unable to exist for ourselves. I wear shoes now (for the most part) not because I choose too, but because not doing so would separate me from my community. In choosing to dress for others, to obey the Frock Conscious, we lean away from self-respect, from what we truly want to do and wear. I put on sneakers when I go to class so I can engage in meaningful conversation that extends beyond the fact I don’t wear shoes.
We are married to our clothes in the same way we are to our skin. We can’t seem to cleave our identity from how we look and present. I haven’t decided if this is a good or bad thing; if I would rather be a child deciding whether a skirt would be too hard to play capture- the- flag in, or a half-adult carefully weighing how the tone and cut of a shirt would enhance my features.
In her diary, Virginia Woolf likened the Frock Conscious to an “envelope.” Outside this envelope, outside of our clothes, we are “foreign bodies,” often unrecognizable to the people around us. The Frock Conscious conceals what we perceive as our nakedness or vulnerability, it protects and connects us to others. Our clothes create our image. But this image is not necessarily indicative of who we are.
Perhaps it is blasphemous to say as a member of Garb, but I think, in order to regain our self-respect, we must find a state where we can wear (or not wear) what we want, without fear of these choices reflecting our identity or ability to join a community - to dress wholly for ourselves.
