Alternatively, perhaps you could give us one reason why you shouldn’t wear one, given that it IS considered more respectful, that isn’t based on misplaced petulance?
Here’s one: Because unless it is YOUR funeral, it’s not about YOU, or your desire to stick it to The Man. It is more respectful than your everyday working wear because it shows that you put someone else before yourself.
Becuase I figure that the poor guy who can’t afford a suit shouldn’t be made to feel bad about it. And the guy who would simply rather invest the money for the future too, instead of wasting it on an item of conspicuous comsumption. So I will crusade against the elitist bullshit until the standards change and it becomes ridiculous to even consider judging a man and feeling superior based on the clothes he wears.
And we are legion 
the ways are changing.
But the deceased probably isn’t going to care. The deceased grandmother might see it as an insult - and now is not the time to point out to conservative traditionalist grandma that her granddaughter was so tacky she thought pink would be nice at a funeral.
What about the guy who owns a WII, but not a suit? Are you crusading for him too? Because he’s an asshole.
Seriously, wolfman’s screed sounds like a speech from the Haymarket demonstration circa 1886. Society isn’t exactly stratified the way it once was, and the vast majority of those strike a pose as being just poor working schlubs who can’t possibly aspire to own a suit are just being posers, IMO.
How is wearing a tie showing you have money? I get that some clothing is more expensive than others, but as evidenced earlier, there are many places you can get a second-hand suit for very cheap.
Additionally, I don’t think you can get an “objective” reason either way why a suit is or isn’t respectful. Realistically, that’s what’s considered respectful by many socio-economic classes, not only by The Man. Along with that idea of respect or disrespect comes baggage, so neither you nor someone advocating the opposite position you are will be able to offer an objective answer.
Why is a T-shirt and jeans more respectful than a Speedo? Hell, why wear clothes at all? Why shave, brush your teeth, or even bother to wash before you come?
The “objective” reason that a suit is more respectful than a collared shirt and pants or T-shirt and jeans – to the extent that anything about cultural mores is objective – is that it signals that you cared enough about the occasion to dress differently and better than you do every other day. Your clothes convey the message that, yes, you understand that the funeral is a solemn and mercifully infrequent occasion, the last at which you can convey your respect to both the dead and those he or she leaves behind. Your clothes convey that by being different (cleaner, neater, nicer) than what you wear to pick up a Big Mac at McDonalds or a load of lumber from Lowe’s.
That’s the reason, not elitism. (Or at least, not for most of us.) The suit may have been an expensive tailored item at one time – and again, this is 2008, not 1808 – but now a suit coat and a pair of dark trousers can be picked up for less than $50 – maybe much less if you know where to shop. And they will last you for the next 20 years, if funerals are the only occasion at which you are pulling them out of the closet. So all the talk about “noblemen” and what they would or would not wear centuries ago is completely irrelevant. If in OUR society today – not 100 years ago or more – the resources to dress “up” for exceptional occasions are within the grasp of virtually everyone – and they are – then your “elitism” argument carries no weight at all. Do you have another argument against appropriate dress that you didn’t have to blow the dust off of?
Um, bump, I think you misread Santo Rugger’s post. He said he bought the suit for a wedding, and that *before that, *the only time he’d worn a tie was the borrowed one for the presentation.
As it happens, the poor black funerals I’ve been at were far, far more somberly dressed than wealthy white ones. It’s really very insulting to claim that people without money shouldn’t/don’t have to follow these standards. When very nice suits are available at Goodwill and you can buy the whole shebang including shoes for twenty bucks there, there is no excuse for disrespect. You wouldn’t wear clothes that were dirty, would you? You might claim that you would, you rebel, but I bet you wouldn’t.
wolfman: Yes, that’s exactly why Mr. S wore a suit to the funeral of a suicide: to lord it over anyone making less money than him who happened to show up. We shook everyone down for their bank books, and laughed at everyone whose balance was lower than ours. :rolleyes:
I don’t know where people got the idea it was OK to “dress down” for church, weddings and funerals. I know rednecks out here in my county who actually take pride in not owning a single necktie, pair of dress slacks or dress shirt. I think I’ve posted before about going to a wedding in a tiny town on the Colorado/Nebraska state line and seeing buck knives in jeans pockets. And that was the bridesmaids!
I like to dress comfortably as much as anyone, but I dress up for funerals, regardless of who’s funeral it is.
Probably the same place women got the idea that it was okay to wear pants instead of dresses all the time. Common sence that the old ways of using clothes to oppress by class was just assinine.
Sorry, I’m interested in showing respect, not conveying messages. If you are at a funeral to convey a message then you are the disrepectful one not me. If you are there to judge other people you are disrepectful not me.
It’s not irrelvant. Is the dusty old reason behind why people see fit to judge someone not in a suit as less of a person. And when that reason finally goes away then the suit will not matter, the elitism will be much less prominent, and people may actually show repect from their heart, not their pocketbook.
This argument doesn’t make any sense at all. When all women wore skirts in American society, all classes did so. It wasn’t like the wealthy wimmens were in skirts while the po’ wimmens were in pants. Women of all classes started wearing trousers around the time of WWII as a direct result of taking a more active role in society (working in factories, planting gardens and fields, fixing homes and cars) that both demanded and “excused” women in pants. (Before that, women who wore trousers were “fast.”) Even after WWII, trousers were not acceptable dress for women in many venues (going to work, going to church, going to – gasp! – weddings and funerals). Today, many women can choose how they dress and do so depending on the occasion. If I wear a black skirt to a funeral, am I more or less “oppressed” than a girl who shows up in jeans?
Fight the powah! Be a slob!
I want some of what wolfman is smoking.
Go shove it. I borrowed a tie for my* final* presentation, out of respect for the people I’d been working with for up to twenty hours a week for a situation where I was going to be 1/4 of the center of attention for a full hour. I bought a suit for a wedding when I was 24 for a situation where I was going to be at the peripheral of attention for an hour.
At a funeral, I’ve never been the center of attention, thank Og. So, you and MeanJoe and LifeonWry and anybody else who agrees wholeheartedly with your post that someone is a loser just because they don’t wear a suit to a funeral can pull the stick out of your bums and realize that not everybody needs a suit, so they wouldn’t have one on hand for a funeral. I’m pretty much the antithesis of a loser, and I don’t need to prove my credentials on a message board, but take the blinders off, drop your brush, and think for a second that in many circles, and especially Gen X and Yers, informal =! loser.
Bolding by me
Exactly. That’s why it does make sence. Women were judged by the clothes they wore as beinig sluts. I think that was stupid, and the state of affairs today when a woman can choose to were pants without a second thought by idiot busybody’s are an improvment. And quickly enough the idiot busybody’s who think they are superior to someone, or have a better respect-quotiant, because of the clothes worn by the person dying and elitism and class oppresion by clothing is getting one more nail in the coffin.
Again, this doesn’t make any sense. “Sshowing respect” is conveying a message. Your message is “respect” and “show” means the same as “convey.” If you are at a funeral to “show respect,” that where is the disconnect that prevents you from seeing that dress is one manner by which you can make that showing of respect, or fail to do so?
How you dress in any given situation always conveys information (a “message”) to those who encounter you. If you wear only a jock strap to a business meeting, you are conveying a message. (The message is “I’m crazy!”)
It doesn’t become relevant just because you say it is. What was relevant among “noblemen” of centuries ago is not relevant in modern society when money is not in reality a barrier for the vast majority of people that prevents them from dressing at least minimally appropriately to the occasion. And no one here but you is talking about judging anyone as “less of a person.” Again, make your own argument instead of misconstruing others’. Do you even have an argument that isn’t, as you yourself admit, both “dusty” and “old”?
You convey a message by how you choose to appear. You may not intend to convey that message, but you do. And, I believe, you have a responsibility to control what that message is, and to be aware of the appropriateness of the message for the circumstances. You convey the message if you are at a funeral, or if you go to a bar.
If I show up in a bar in four inch heels and a short skirt, I’m conveying a message - someone is getting lucky tonight. (Maybe my date, maybe a complete stranger). Maybe that isn’t the message I intend to send, but if you are my date, you are going to be quite unhappy if at the end of the night I give you a peck on the cheek and get all offended if you say you expected more.
A funeral is one of the times where we are particularly careful about the messages we send. Emotions are high, the mourners may not know at all what you are wearing, or they may blow an unintentional offense all out of proportion. Our job, unless we are particularly close, is to comfort the grieving, and help grieve, not put additional strain on the situation by behaving inappropriately. That’s dress, but that is also behavior - what we choose to talk about, how we go out of our way to greet the immediate family, even if they are unknown to us, and the words that seem so meaningless, but scripted “I’m so sorry…”