Cecil adopts a laissez-faire attitude about the surgeon general wanting to wear a uniform and then somehow exerting pressure on other PHS employees to follow suit and wear a uniform, concluding his essay by saying, “why not?”
I say, why? Why in the first place. Uniforms cost money. They also tend to have a dehumanizing effect on the wearer. The military is a place where people get killed and it helps to think of them as just a statistic, just a column of uniformed soldiers. The dehumanization process does not stop there, though. The required use of “Sir” or “Ma’am” in ALL conversation between military personnel is intentionally enforces to prevent the normal human familiarity and friendships from forming, the the consequences of a soldier’s death on his comrades emotional well being is minimized. (It being less traumatic if you were not close friends with the young man next to you who just fell to a sniper’s bullet)
Do we really need to further dehumanize our nation’s health care providers? It’s bad enough to call them “providers” and “vendors” instead of what they are, hard working, compassionate doctors and nurses.
Your comment, both positive and negative are welcome. Thank you for reading my opinion on this matter.
Uniforms are not dehumanizing. If properly done, uniforms can create an esprit de corps, establish a hierarchy, create an impression of authority among non-wearers and make the wearer look sharp all at the same time.
IIRC, when the trucking company J.B. Hunt established uniforms for it’s drivers a few years ago, turnover decreased, morale improved and recruitment got easier.
That’s not to say that everyone should switch to uniforms, nor that it’s necessarily the best answer for the SG staff. But in general, uniforms are nowhere near as bad as the OP implies.
I’ll leave clearing up the anti-military part to someone else.
One is also tempted to point out that the United Parcel Service delivery uniform was chosen by females at one point as one of the sexiest forms of dress around.
The OP poster is quite obviously biased against the military from the tone of the post. Leaving the duty of refuting the assertions posted about the negative aspects of ‘militarism’ as a lifestyle, I would simply ask the poster for his source material for his assertions.
Thank you for your thought provoking responses. I really kind of like the military, my wife is a veteran of the Gulf War, and was in the Naval reserves at the time. She told me about the required use of “sir” and “ma’am” to discourage fraternization, and subsequently diminish such human tendencies as the formation of rapport and friendship.
Military men must accept risk and death as part of their job. We can’t afford to have them get all blubbery and tearful everytime a fellow soldier dies in battle, so we train them to act otherwise. How many times have you heard a soldier or police officer say, “My training kicked in, I didn’t really think what I was doing, I didn’t have time to.”
That’s what they often say after a crisis situation, and this is why we train them, so they behaving like machines instead of the human beings they are, in just such situations. The process of training these soldiers to be unemotional killers is necessary, and I am not in any way suggesting we should do away with boot camp or the other military conventions mentioned above, such as uniforms.
Uniforms induce conformity and do away with individuality. By so doing they dehumanize the wearer to a variable extent. The esprit de corps is esprit of a group, not esprit of the individual. It is just the kind of thing I am talking about, you are no longer an individual but a part of a “corps.” Which is great for an army. Not so great for a diverse group of practitioners of all forms of the healing arts.
For an example, a white nurse’s uniform evokes certain expectations of kind, nuturing qualities, and concern for the sick. Here is a uniform that may indeed be appropriate, and only minimally dehumanizing. Now imagine Florence Nightengale in full battle gear- it does not evoke the same kind of trusting feeling, does it? Somehow, the military uniform suggests different, less appropraite feelings to the viewer.
Trying to put military style uniforms on health care providers is about as appropriate as asking the Navy Seals to perform their duties in adorable pressed white nursing uniforms. It makes no sense, except maybe to C. Everett Coop, who, I admit, looks just fine in his fighting duds, maybe even quite good. However I suggest that it tends to detract from his image as a “healer.”
And please let me reiterate, I kind of like the military, I certainly have nothing against the military.
The current potential future ex-Mrs. manhattan is not going to be happy when she finds out what I read about on the message board today. Off to the uniform shop I go!
Regarding the other parts of your post: Fair enough on the military part. I (and others) read into your post more than you apparently meant, so let’s move on.
Your nurse analogy is an apt one. I don’t think that anyone has in mind that members of the Surgeon General’s staff will don battle fatigues and face paint. The idea (I think) is to put them in dress uniform (probably more casual in the lab, of course) to foster the uniformity of purpose that the leadership of the organization wants to instill. I still don’t see anything wrong with that. No one at UPS is de-humanized by wearing the brown.
Properly done, encouraging conformance with the group need not snuff out individuality. Heck, take your military example. Sure, the uniform is part of the process of getting everyone to look forward to the “big goal,” whether it’s defending the country or rendering humanitarian assistance or simply marching up and down the square. But that does not mean that the military does not want it’s soldiers to show initiative in battle or elsewhere. Indeed, officers are trained in thinking outside the box. The idea is to get peoples’ thinking to move in the same desired direction, that’s all.
I don’t know that the use of titles for address is necessarily to dehuminize anyone. The reason for discouraging fraternization and using sir and ma’am are to protect the chain of command. If some private is good buddies with the lieutenant running the show, then he’s likely to get preferential treatment. He won’t get KP duty, doesn’t have to take point, etc. Also, if the troops feel like buddies with their superior officers, it can get in the way when it comes time to follow tough orders. Chain of command is very important in making sure the troops follow the orders of the officers. Thus the title’s of respect, and the non-fraternization rules.
As far as dehuminization caused by uniforms… fast food workers wear uniforms. UPS delivery people have to wear those shorts.
“I think that the public responds to uniforms, they command respect and are easily identifiable.”
So she agrees with you jokers.
OK then Goddammmit i am on my own here now like I give a F@&k
Did you ever have to wear a uniform?
I am telling you now that uniforms suck.
Do you really think that an individual that stays in school until he is 30-33 years old to earn the title of “physician” should be reduced to wearing a uniform, like a janitor?
And that is ignoring this whole military thing, which I maintain is completely separate from medicine and health care in general. My whole freaking point was that any such comparisons are invalid.
And don’t get me wrong, I kind of like the military.
Or, like a soldier, an airline pilot, a priest, a police officer, a firefighter, a paramedic, etc. Gee, it seems a lot of people train for quite some time to be ‘reduced to wearing a uniform’…
And, frankly, physicians wear uniforms to begin with. It’s not a big step to go from dress-pants, white (or, if they’re especially creative, blue) shirt and tie under a labcoat to a military style uniform under a labcoat.
Hells, most every occupation has a uniform of sorts, even if it’s simply a case of their clients expecting them to dress in a certain (usually quite conservative, and thus extraordinarily homogenous) way.
A janitor’s overalls might not inspire respect, but, for most people ‘Uniforms’ - especially military uniforms - don’t inspire an automatic disrespect for most people.
It sure does for me. If I’m lying bleeding in the field, I want Florence in camoflauge fatigues, at least. Her little white nurse dress is only going to make her more visible and draw more fire. They wear those green or khaki clothes for a reason, you know.
Uniforms are everywhere. At every grocery store, they all wear the same outfits. So do most waiters and waitresses. And flight attendants. Orderlies in the hospital all wear the same colour scrubs. That’s how we know who they are.
I, for one, do not see a uniform as a sign of ‘being reduced’ to anything. It’s rather dignified and honourable, IMO. And I wouldn’t knock being a janitor…they get paid good money (up to $30/hr where I live) to clean up our garbage.
Going back to my experience on joining the Army, when everybody has the same haircut and same clothes, it forces you to look more closely at the individual to know who they are, rather than to recognize them by superficial features such as length or style of hair, or individual clothing.
It also makes it less likely that any individual would express his “superiority” by a different set of clothes. There are medals and such, though.
Depends on the uniform. A Taco Bell uniform is not my idea of a respect-commanding uniform. However, some uniforms are nice. Take military dress uniforms (not combat fatigues). They are really spiffy looking.
Don’t women like a guy in uniform?
Uniforms are a form of symbology. People attach meaning to a uniform, and look for certain things from people based on the symbols of that job or position, including the uniform. For example, a janitor in a set of coveralls. The fast food worker in their paper hat. (Am I fixating?) Nurses wearing scrubs. Doctors wearing their white lab coats. Police in blue, black, or brown, and their badges. Postal workers. Someone already mentioned it, but business people wearing “power suits”.
So I don’t think it’s necessarily wearing a uniform that’s bad. It’s which uniform you wear, and the message that uniform conveys.
Although people are different, and some people may not be happy being dictated what to wear. I am fortunate to work in an environment where I can dress casually, which makes work comfortable. On the other hand, uniforms remove the challenge of deciding what to wear.
There’s also a distinction to be made here between “dehumanizing” and “deindividuating.” Uniforms are by nature deindividuating, but not dehumanizing. People in uniform are conveying the importance of their role over their individuality at that moment. That’s why you find all these different kind of uniforms. It’s useful to know at a glance which person can tell you where something is located when you’re at your local Wal-Mart, or which person can protect you in his or her role as a police officer if you are in danger, or which person can provide medical assistance. When we respond to someone’s uniform, we’re treating him or her as a performer of a role. There’s an important difference between this effect and dehumanization, which can sometimes occur as a result of uniformity (as in a battle situation), but not always.
Thank you again folks for your well thought out comments and constructive attitudes.
It would seem that I stand alone in my opinion about forcing Public Health Service physicians to wear military style uniforms.
Everyone who has responded seems to think it is a great idea to attire our PHS physicians so that they resemble storm troopers.
You all have been so logical and polite with your responses, that you have convinced me. Perhaps having physicians dress up like soldiers is not such a bad idea after all. I kinda liked the old show “MAS*H”, and those doctors were always dressed in battle fatigues. I guess it didn’t bother me then, why should it bother me now? And that Loretta Switt looked, well, nice in her green fatigues, as I recall.
But why stop there?
Why not compel all these dapper “warriors in the fight against disease” to carry sidearms, too? A Glock in a black leather holster would really complete the “look”.
Warning: I’m blatantly hijacking the thread, but we’re only going as far as Atlanta, not Havana. (^:
How about the pseudo-military uniforms that doormen, especially in hotels, have to wear? They don’t look TOO ridiculous when the uniform hat is a military-style brimmed cap, but, IMHO, they look completely absurd when the uniform hat is that round, flat-topped, French-army-style hat (what is that called?).
I agree with most of the people here that uniforms have the practical effect of making people performing a particular duty easily identifiable, and the fringe benefit of lending a certain dignity to the job. But when the uniform is fancy out of all proportion to the job, it makes the wearer the butt of jokes rather than dignified.
When you see someone in a forest green uniform with gold buttons and lots of gold piping on the lapels, sleeves, and pants legs – and the aforementioned French hat – brushing up cigarette butts in front of the Civic Opera or the Palmer House, you don’t think “what a classy uniform,” you make a wisecrack to a companion along the lines of “DeGaulle over there must have got demoted, eh?”
I never said it was a good idea to dress doctors as soldiers. I responded to your assertion that uniforms are inherently dehuminizing and are always bad.
Dress a doctor like a doctor, a nurse like a nurse, a janitor like a janitor, and a Playboy Bunny like a Playboy Bunny.
I hate to see the OP getting trounced like this, so I’ll throw a little support his way.
Uniforms should only be used as a form of indentification. They should be used to answer the following questions:
Who’s on my side? (military, sports)
Who’s authorized to be doing what they’re doing? (police, firemen)
Who works here and what’s their job? (Taco Bell, Post Office)
Who’s in charge here?
The SG might squeak by on number 4, but other government leaders seem to do just fine without uniforms. The day the President of the United States wears a uniform is the day I make use of my wife’s British citizenship.
Are they for identifying sides? I would say no - you typically only have one “side” at a school, unless you differentiate the uniforms by grade level, or some other contrived notion.
Are they used to show authority? Not really. The reason for school uniforms is not to designate authority (except perhaps the lack of authority?), but rather to make everyone look alike to prevent violence and/or disrespect.
Is it to designate job? Maybe. It shows who goes there and their role - student.
Who’s in charge here? No, not really.
The stated reasons emphasized for uniforms is conformity. Thus you don’t get goths, for example. The presumption is that everyone will then look alike, and thus reduce any we/they notions for the various cliques and gangs, and also the economic class differences.
But does it work? Well, prisons use uniforms for conformity, but prisoners still find ways to show clique and gang identity, and form subgroups, etc. They wear accessories, or wear the uniforms in particular (odd, funny, stupid) ways. So any school regulations on uniforms would have to take that into account, and limit ALL differences in appearance.
What about socio-economic class? Is everyone provided a set number of uniforms and no others, or do the haves buy extra uniforms (a fresh set every day) while the have-nots reuse the same one every day, and thus the wear and tear factor becoming a visual clue to difference in class?
I don’t know that uniforms will really solve the problem, because from what I recall, clothing wasn’t so much the determining factor for dividing into groups as temperment, interests, and other non-tangible factors. No matter what the clothing regulations, I don’t think you can that easily make all students want to be/hang with the computer geeks, bookworms, and other nerds. Similarly, the jocks will tend to stand out regardless of their attire.
So the main reason left is to reduce violence by preventing envy of the other person’s attire. No killing for a $100 pair of basketball shoes because everyone has the same type. Maybe it will have some effect. Or maybe just delay it till after school, when the kids are on the streets wearing their personalized attire.
As a teacher, I think student uniforms are great (for me). It stomps out the greatest menaces to disipline; individualism and creativity. Fortunately schools aren’t built for the benifit of teachers.
Irishman is right. Uniforms are dehumanizing. That’s a good thing if you’re creating an army. It stinks if you’re creating citizens for a democratic society built on rugged individualism.
