Public Speaking: Dress for Success

Girls of a certain age expose their stomachs, and boys expose their underwear.  Those of us who are too old to seek this kind of social status based on sex appeal are more concerned about dressing to project power, authority, and stability.

We select our clothes even more carefully when we are going to present.  Do we dress like the audience?  Do we dress in our finest?  Or do we calculate what the audience will wear and dress slightly more formally?

We agonize over such questions because clothing is one of the languages we speak.  Our first (or second) language is English.  Then we have the specialized language of our industry or profession, which in some cases takes years to master.  We also speak body language, over which we have little control and which communicates volumes about who we are.  Then there is para-linguistics, which amounts to the impact of our speaking voice (nasal? whiney? fast? sonorous? deep? Brooklynese? Old New England?)

But not to be neglected is what social science calls “Symbolic Communication.”  We choose our clothes, grooming, and accessories to show the world who we want to be.  Thus, in adolescence, soon after the hormones kick in, we drop our drawers and raise our shirts to say, “I have the power of sex appeal.”

And when that phase is over, we climb into our power suits and power ties, wear a lot of black, and keep our hair neat and tidy so as not to suggest anything too playful.

We choose our watches and our cars as accessories, in order to tell others that we are successful and in-demand.  We locate our businesses at prestigious addresses in order to appeal to the social aspirations of our potential customers.  Such choices are forms of symbolic communication.

We do this to earn the trust and respect of others, so that they will give us responsibility and money, and we will therefore be prosperous, respectable, and secure.

I find it fascinating that it is difficult to trust somebody who is not dressed properly.  We want airline pilots, judges, and doctors to wear uniforms.  And those of us in business create our own uniform code of attire.  Blue suits, red ties, skirts at the knee, cleavage in storage.

We don’t want our heart surgeons and pilots to wear torn blue jeans and ripped T-shirts.  We don’t want our bankers to dress like Jimi Hendrix or Elton John.

Clothes make the man.  I think Beau Brummel said that.

Deep down, we’re all shallow.  Oscar Wilde said that.

I say clothes are either about sex or power.  Guess which type presenters wear?