At long last, the rigid and outdated dress code in Congress has been sent down the river of bad ideas, along with the Segway and natural childbirth.
Americans have been going through a sea change regarding work, with many of us experiencing not less but more productivity when we started working from home during the pandemic. Among the young, the change is even deeper. They are vocal about their disdain for jobs that might not end at 5 o’clock and bosses who police employee behavior, right down to what they wear. They are rightly disaffected by the workings of a government where a gerontocracy rules and things never seem to get better. The elimination of the dress code could be one small step toward making Congress more relevant to them; it will make the institution seem less formal, less impenetrable.
Changing the dress code is, however, a half measure, because there is no way of getting around the problem of the Capitol itself. With its Latin inscriptions, marble staircases, and graven images of slaveholding presidents, the building—and the ideas of American greatness and exceptionalism it represents—is hardly consistent with our current interests. Its power to suppress self-expression—personal and political—is obvious. It may be time to reexamine not just Congress’s dress code, but its office space.
No legal document absolutely requires the legislative branch to conduct business in the Capitol, so the possibilities are endless. Consider, for example, moving Congress from the Mall to a mall, specifically, its food court.
A mall would offer our legislators drivability, endless parking, and a casual atmosphere that would help them work smarter, not harder. Gone would be those fusty chamber desks that make the members look like Longfellow scratching out a poem with an old nib. Food courts’ abundant seating would get rid of the hierarchical arrangements in the chambers. Of course, everyone will want to sit next to Orange Julius, but it won’t take five reelections and membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution to do it. In true democratic fashion, the best seat can go to the newest and youngest—all he or she has to do is floor it on the Beltway and get there first.
Imagine a new senator, riddled with anxiety about his first vote, asking his tablemate to hold his seat while he gets up, stretches his legs, and pours himself a refreshing half gallon of Hi-C. His blood sugar raised, his body uncramped, he can vote to invade Mexico with confidence. Busy working parents could end their day by grabbing a delicious meal to take home. Kids love two things: bicameral legislation and Baja Fresh. And imagine the sergeant at arms (in a Snuggie and shower slides) calling the (food) court to order as he announces the arrival of the president to give the State of the Union address. Innovative, fun, casual. Or picture the Ways and Means Committee conducting its important work in a Foot Locker. That makes more sense than anywhere with a transom window.
Chuck Schumer’s decision to change the rules was apparently prompted by the situation of Senator John Fetterman, who does the people’s business in a mall-appropriate hoodie and gym shorts, and has therefore sometimes been forced to yell votes in from doorways. But when announcing the reform, Schumer revealed the cowing nature of long-held and empty traditions: “Senators are able to choose what they wear on the Senate floor. I will continue to wear a suit.”
Usually the people chafing against dress codes are women and girls. But all it took here were the whims of two cisgender, straight white men. Still, shopping malls can impose a mediating force on all that privilege. Despite the sports bars and Best Buys, American malls were originally designed for suburban women, who were newly stranded away from the commerce of urban centers, and malls have been meeting their needs ever since. In a mall, the thundering pronouncements of male legislators—traditionally booming upward into the Capitol’s great dome (on which George Washington himself is depicted being borne straight to heaven)—would quickly get dialed down to the inside voices of small boys politely asking their mothers for quarters to play in the arcade.
A lot of people are losing their mind over the dress-code situation, mostly conservatives who are appealing to the kind of propriety, decency, and correctness that they can no longer claim for themselves. There was a time—very much in living memory—when the hallmark of a conservative was his forbearance, his unwillingness to match the crude language and outrageousness of the radicalized left, and his almost religious belief in the power of dressing quietly.
Think of Richard Nixon in the East Room welcoming the Ray Conniff Singers to the stage. “If the music is square, it’s because I like it square,” he says, with a twinkle in his eye. The singers—very young women in pale-blue gowns and very young men in navy-blue blazers—file in, but before they begin one of the girls unrolls a scroll that reads Stop the killing, and says, in a calm, certain voice: “President Nixon, stop bombing human beings, animals, and vegetation.” She then goes on to explain that although he “pray[s] to Jesus Christ,” his faith is hollow.
Did the humiliated president match incivility with incivility, in the way of modern conservatives? No, he took it like a man and worked through his feelings by planning the Christmas bombings of North Vietnam.
But many of today’s elected conservatives are no longer interested in public restraint, which they consider a sucker’s game. They feel that their own politeness and even temperament allowed liberal savagery to mow them down, and they’re not taking it anymore.
Marjorie Taylor Greene called Lauren Boebert “a little bitch” on the House floor, and Tim Burchett said he thought that was cool because he’s a “professional-wrestling fan” down with the idea of the women someday having a fistfight: “I kind of dig that.”
Lindsey Graham went on Fox News (blue blazer, no tie) to explain—regarding immigration—that Donald Trump “scared the shit out of Mexico.”
One night in July, some congressional pages were commemorating their last week in the program by taking pictures of the awe-inspiring Capitol dome, lying down on the floor to get a shot that encompassed its sweep. When newly elected Representative Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin encountered them, he yelled, “Wake the fuck up, you little shits,” according to one of the pages. He told them to “get the fuck out of here,” called them “jackasses,” and then—God love him—told them that they were “defiling the space.”
Now, what kind of talk is this? Is it “Here, Sir, the people govern” talk? Hell no. It’s mall talk! These people will fit right in. Lauren Boebert doesn’t want to spend one more lunch hour eating a bowl of bilious navy-bean soup. No, she wants to get a Jamba and check out the sale at Forever 21.
The best aspect of this modest proposal is that shopping malls are a failing enterprise. Scores of them sit empty, abandoned temples to a forgotten god. The good ice no longer rattles into paper cups, Santa has left the building, and even the most star-crossed teenagers no longer want to wander, pinkie fingers linked, through the runway-size halls.
We’ve moved on. We’re tired of malls, although we take their existence for granted. If there weren’t a Sharper Image, no grandfather would ever get a Christmas present. Of course the mall exists; we just don’t go there anymore.
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