From "Furry Slippers and Sweatpants: Young Chinese Embrace ‘Gross Outfits’ at Work/The social media movement is the latest sign that some of China’s young people are resisting the compulsion to strive" (NYT).
Defying expectations for proper work attire reflects a growing aversion among China’s youth to a life of ambition and striving that marked the past few decades. As the country’s growth slows and promising opportunities recede, many young people are choosing instead to “lie flat,” a countercultural approach to seeking an easy and uncomplicated life. And now even those with steady jobs are staging a quiet protest...
The hashtag “gross outfits at work” spread across multiple Chinese social media platforms and it unleashed a competition of whose work dress was the most repulsive....
The article links to videos at TikTok. In case you're into thinking about how TikTok is a plot to impose Chinese ways on Americans, consider how TikTok leads the Chinese to behave more like Americans. And by "like Americans," I mean like people who think about their own individual lives and what makes the body feel good and the mind happy.
“It’s the progress of the times,” said Xiao Xueping, a psychologist in Beijing. She said young people grew up in a relatively more inclusive environment than earlier generations and learned to put their own feelings first....
Interesting to see the word "inclusive" in that paraphrase of the Chinese psychologist. I don't think American "inclusiveness" corresponds to putting our own feelings first. It's more a matter of withholding or changing our own feelings our of consideration for the feelings certain categories of other people.
The "gross outfits at work" trend reminds me of the American trend from 10 years ago that went under a label I haven't seen in a long time: "normcore."
I'm giving this post my "disgust" tag not because I think anything is disgusting but because the wearers of these clothes have embraced the erstwhile insult "gross." I like the liberation in flipping an insult.
Posts
38 comments:
Dressing somewhat inappropriately is one recommened course for avoiding the Peter Principle and staying with a job that you're competent at.
A recession solves most of these problems...
I like how they had to add the piggish request by the boss. NYT knew they were a bit short on empathy...
East Asian standards for rebellion and self-expression can pale in comparison to Western hippies, rockers, glams, punkers, emos, transgendered, etc. In some Asian countries getting a perm or bleaching one's hair from black to orange-blonde can make one stand out as rebellious. This alone may limit a person to narrow career paths (e.g., entertainment, gambling, nightclubs, tourism, etc.) and prevent corporate hiring.
China has had thousands of years of "similar" monarchic and oligarchic governments -- there's lots of rebellious smoke but not much fire. I see this trend as likely slumping back to tradition and conformity.
She has for the first time started to turn down work assignments she doesn’t want to do
...all she wanted now was to live in the moment with a stable job.
The first sentence will not lead to the second.
i'm sorry. Call me a single male; but fuzzy slippers and sweat pants sounds pretty sexy!
Assuming that the woman IS sexy, clothes (or the lack) just make her sexier.
fuzzy slippers and sweat pants on a 9? sexy!
tight skirt and lowcut blouse on a 3? yuk oh!
In sales, (Everyone is in sales), meeting and exceeding expectations is the number one goal.
Appearance is the first expectation.Then manners, attitude, language skills. If those immediate expectations are fails, you are working from a deficit.
But you be you and march to the voices in your head.
This is because Joe Biden and the Democrat party are spreading their communist ideology to the People's Republic of China.
Socialism tends to discourage personal initiative - same pay for everyone regardless of how much or how little you produce - so the only way to boost productivity is to set quotas and punish those who fail to meet them.
Better a wage-slave than a state-slave.
I often wondered what the effect American TikTok had on the Chinese. How does our craziness affect the agents using TikTok to spy on us? Do they have to undergo re-education after prolonged exposure?
Lying Flat is something in China where a lot of companies require 996 - work from 9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week. People burn out and some younger people will Lie Flat, doing enough to get by, rather than work 996.
consider how TikTok leads the Chinese to behave more like Americans.
Isn't tiktok banned in China?
John Henry
"resisting the compulsion to strive"
Right up to the moment a robot takes over.
"I don't think American "inclusiveness" corresponds to putting our own feelings first. It's more a matter of withholding or changing our own feelings our of consideration for the feelings certain categories of other people."
It's more a matter of progs forcing people to show the right feelings toward their preferred categories of other people. Leaving some categories excluded, of course.
So the NYT reports on the fashion choices of youthful protesters in the Communist Worker's Paradise. What cutting-edge investigative journalism, exploring the world's pressing issues that we all must know more about. How's that whole 'Uyghurs in China' thingie going, anyway?
In case you're into thinking about how TikTok is a plot to impose Chinese ways on Americans, consider how TikTok leads the Chinese to behave more like Americans.
I don't know, it seems like the algorithm is pushing things on viewers that destabilize society - the whole trans movement, quiet quitting, dress like a slob and stop trying, etc. Plus you are assuming that these videos are authentic and not staged for TikTok consumption.
Isn't tiktok banned in China?
According to CNN from last week, TikTok has never been available in mainland China, and was banned in Hong Kong in 2020. The company that runs TikTok has a "sister" app called Douyin that is available only in China. Anyone know what that app pushes? I bet it is significantly different than TikTok.
My DiL is a Chinese immigrant who dresses like this. She'll go to Sam's Club in huge cartoonish mule slippers and her hair in random twists. She's completely unselfconscious about it (and she looks adorable). It's no political statement for her, it's just comfortable fashion.
Further to my previous post, according to one website, the most popular videos on Douyin are educational content, with videos helping to improve skills and grow personally, and non-Chinese videos are banned. So we are not influencing or "Westernizing" Chinese in any way.
Stable job? Sure, that can be a plus.
Until:
- You are deep into middle age and get sick of having watched your former peers, then the kids in the office" pass you by,
- You never get picked to be on the team for creative, challenging, dare I say fun, projects,
- Times get tough and management looks around to see who is pulling their weight,
- You are socially shunned at work for being the old, "not my job" slacker.
Lots of things look good when you are young that turn out to be ot so good down that road.
I've met very few women at work who I wanted to see in "sexier outfits". In any case, "sexy" and "work" don't go together in a serious work enviroment. Its just a distraction.
Well, yeah, she was picky about what to work on, but she was at least coming into the office instead of staying home in pajamas like her friends.
This post and the Judith Butler post yesterday would benefit from a ‘kids these days’ tag. I see you used to have a ‘these kids today’ tag but there’s a subtle difference.
Gee, young people don't want to work hard or dress up to succeed in a corrupt and failing system.
How appalling!
Hell, even Nazis dressed up and worked hard to get ahead.
"She said that her boss once asked her to wear something sexier to work, but that she had ignored his request."
I was once threatened with an EEO complaint for suggesting that one of my team leads dress less sexy at work. She was standing in my office bawling like a little child who’d stubbed her toe because she felt disrespected by her peers. Well, I’m sure she was proud of looking like a woman in her early twenties when she was, in fact, in her mid-thirties with two adolescent children at home, but celebrating casual Fridays by wearing push up bras, tight sweaters, and tighter slacks was not how to convince other project members — male or female — that you deserve respect.
A boss who asks his female staff to “wear something sexier” should have the job offer from his next firm already in hand.
This displays a trust in the future I never had (and I was a tenured professor!). I strove not to get promoted, but to maintain employment. And to accrue enough wealth that I was no longer dependent on the whims of others.
I also just had a sense of responsibility. My employers counted on me, my students counted on me, and I owed it to them to deliver.
"According to CNN from last week, TikTok has never been available in mainland China, and was banned in Hong Kong in 2020."
Well that certainly puts a spin on the current debate, doesn't it? Unsurprising, I guess, but telling.
'i'm sorry. Call me a single male; but fuzzy slippers and sweat pants sounds pretty sexy!'
Years ago I worked with a woman who was (imho) the most beautiful woman on earth...ethereal.
She often wore overalls to the office.
***
In the US, women bring fancy shoes to wear in the office while they wear sneakers to walk to work in the big city.
In Tokyo, I noticed that the women there sometimes wore sneakers in the office, but always wore fancy shoes outside, on the subway, etc.
It led to me witnessing a few spectacular falls on the street. Orthopedic surgeons in Tokyo must do very well...
The problem here is women look good in almost anything, likely even these "gross outfits". Like Kate mentioned in her comment, her daughter-in-law still looks adorable with messy hair and goofy slippers. And if you're the only one doing it in your office, you're going to stand out, which ostensibly is the opposite of what Ms. Chen wants.
I might be too focused on the use of "sexier" in the post title here, but the only surefire way to avoid the male gaze at work is a burqa. And what's going to defy work attire expectations more than that? Come to think of it, if women were to start wearing burqas in public at a young enough age, they'd also solve the deepfake porn problem from the other day.
If work dressing up was tied to the search for a mate with whom you could procreate, once children are removed from the picture, dressing up becomes redundant.
Bird Of Paradise Courtship Spectacle
Claire Fu
"I am a reporter and researcher for The New York Times, covering China. I’m based in Seoul."
Daisuke Wakabayashi
"I am an Asia business correspondent for The New York Times based in Seoul"
I'm not sure these two have sure insight into the fashion choices of hundreds of millions of Chinese workers.
They saw something on the internet and made it into an article.
Amen, Iowan re sales.
If you don't look professional, your client or customer won't think of you as a professional. The trick is to always be slightly, but only slightly, better dressed than the client.
Back in the day when I was selling machinery and would spend days in my office on the phone trying to find and promote projects or just remind clients that I was still alive, dressing was important. My office is in my basement, nobody other than my wife or kids ever goes there, so I can work in my underwear if I like. But I found that I did much better if I dressed in slacks, shoes and socks and a sport shirt.
What ever happened to:
"Look the part, be the part"
"Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp" Old Gillette ad
And Howard can probably expand on this one:
"You can't feel like a Marine, you can't think like a Marine, you can't BE a Marine if you don't look like a Marine"
John Henry
OT but on the subject of selling:
Sales is one of the easiest jobs to evaluate because it is so quantitative.
How many potential clients did you contact, say 100.
How many did you qualify as prospects, say 50
How many were interested enough to ask for a proposal (10)
How many orders did you close (1)
Every sales person has a similar sales funnel, though the numbers may change.
John Henry
And if selling on straight commission as I did for 22 years, if you can't do the job you'll go hungry ("Timid salesmen have skinny kids" - Judge Ziglar)
In 1979 I went to a 3 day class on High Purity Water in New Jersey. Most everyone there was from pharma (sterile, pyrogen free water) or electronics (ultra, ultra, pure water for chip making) Perhaps 25-30 people from different companies all over the US.
We were all in jacket and tie. There were several IBM engineers, they were in dark suits, white shirts and ties. In the 70s, even the IBM guy who serviced our copier dressed like that.
And there was one guy who looked like he had just come in from slopping the hogs on his farm in West Virginia. Bib overalls, T-shirt, muddy wellington boots with pants stuffed in long scraggly hair, big untrimmed beard.
His name tag said something like "Bob Smith - IBM"
During a break I was chatting with one of the other IBMers and I asked about this guy. I asked if he really worked for IBM. "Yup", they told me. I said "He doesn't dress like an IBM guy"
They explained "That is DOCTOR Bob Smith. He holds half a dozen key IBM technology patents. He gets to dress any way he feels like"
John Henry
Another work dress story:
Back in the 70s I was maintenance manager for Alcon Labs. There was a woman who used to sell light bulbs. Nothing real special, flourescent tubes, incandescent bulbs, halogen warehouse lights and so on. If it was a light bulb, she sold it.
This is sexist as Hell but she dressed sexy. Micro-mini skirt, low cut blouse and push up bra, really sexy voice. Pure business and professional but there is not a guy alive who would not fantasize "Maybe if I buy 3 dozen boxes of tubes instead of 2 she'll ..."
She was making $60-70,000 selling light bulbs that one could buy in a hardware store for about the same price. The owner of the company told me that she made more than he did.
You can't sell if you can't get in the door, she could always get in the door.
I always subscribed to the "Paint your fanny green and go naked if that's what it takes" school of sales. In my case though, I not only would not get in the door, I'd get arrested driving to the plant.
John Henry
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dress_for_Success_(book)
Lem,
I've seen that video. It demonstrates one of the larger holes in the Theory of Evolution in its present, generally accepted form. There's no accounting for unlearned, complex behaviors.
For example, slender Chinese ladies with long black hair down to their bottoms wearing long, silk, tight, red dresses with slits up the side somehow know the effect that has on males in the vicinity.
Well, maybe that's not the same, but I needed the visual, to counter the topic.
Darkisland/John Henry:
Even working at home I will be fully dressed, and if it is an on-line meeting I may put on a suit and tie (depends if the meeting is external or internal). My theory is nothing bad will happen with the camera if I am fully dressed.
The alt rock/funk group from Sacramento, Cake, describes a girl who dresses for success:
I want a girl with a mind like a diamond
I want a girl who knows what's best
I want a girl with shoes that cut
And eyes that burn like cigarettes
I want a girl with the right allocations
Who is fast, and thorough, and sharp as a tack
She's playing with her jewelry
She's putting up her hair
She's touring the facility
And picking up slack
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket
I want a girl who gets up early (gets up early)
I want a girl who stays up late (stays up late)
I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity (uninterrupted)
Who uses a machete, to cut through red tape
With fingernails (hey), that shine like justice (ho)
And a voice that is dark (hey), like tinted glass (ho)
She is fast (hey), thorough, and sharp as a tack (ho)
She is touring the facility (hey) and picking up slack
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long, long jacket
Post a Comment