brianeyci wrote:RedImperator wrote:Have you ever actually worked with teenagers? Almost all of them are perfectly capable of grapsing the "nuance" of "You can wear what you want sometimes, but not others". When a kid dresses inapproppriately for a job interview, almost always one of these:
1. He was never taught what constitutes approppriate dress at a job interview.
2. He was taught, but doesn't believe it actually matters.
3. He was taught, but he refuses to because "it's not fair", "I have a Constitutional right etc.", "Fuck you", or whatever other justification he's come up with for attempting to push at his boundaries (which is what every teenager who doesn't grow up into a hopelessly dependent mama's boy does; some are just better than others at figuring out which boundaries to push).
Of course a teenager can dress however he wants, within the limits of the law and what his parents allow, on his own time, and he's going to figure out the first half in about 20 minutes if he owns a television. What you have to teach is the second part, which really isn't that difficult, and even those that fall under 2 and 3 will get it after a few blown job interviews. If he really is so dumb you need to lie about this, what he needs to wear is a helmet.
You seem to prove my case for me. If teenagers see on TV they can dress how they want, but only in certain situations, there's no point in telling them that like Zac wants to. Meanwhile, you can say, no you can't dress how you want,
not all the time. How is that a lie?
There's nothing wrong with that, which is probably why
I said the exact same thing, you idiot. If
you had as well, then I wouldn't have even replied. But you didn't.
you wrote:Here's the problem Zac. They can't dress how they want. Teenagers don't like being lied to, and if they find out you've been sugar coating or see white lies there's hell to pay.
Better to tell them, no they can't dress how they want, not if they want a career and a future. If they whine, bring up sports uniforms.
They can't dress how they want, full stop. Different from what I said (in a post you've
quoted, for Christ's sake), which is "You can wear whatever you want sometimes, but not others". Different from Zac's, too, which was functionally identical to mine.
It's a lot more complicated than you think.
Yeah, you're right, as a professional adult who has worked with teenagers, I don't understand the value of dressing professionally or teenage psychology. Good think I have you to set me straight, or I might start telling teenagers to wear gimp suits to presidential debates.
Mike has said when teenagers go to his company to hand in a resume, if they're dressing like shit going there they don't even take a second look and quietly file it away. That's not even an interview. Meanwhile there are stories on this forum of college girls dressing like they're going clubbing to a dentist's office, then the dentist phoning the school and telling them he'll never take another student again. There's also the whole issue of ponytails, nose rings, tattoos, purple hair, pink hair etc. etc.
You see, this is why every one of my long posts takes hours to compose and contains compound-complex sentences and paragraph-length parenthetical asides exhaustively listing every concievable circumstances--because when I
don't, there's always somebody who brings up some pointless nitpick and thinks he's scored a point.
Fine, Brian, if you
insist: When a kid dresses inapproppriately for a job interview, first day of work, college interview, first date, dental appointment, state dinner, funeral, Bat Mitzva, opera performance, log-throwing contest, polar expedition, visit to Jiffy Lube, Christmas dinner at grandma's, ritual sacrifice, one-night stand, birth of firstborn child, invasion of a small, oil-rich country, gubernatorial innaugration, first contact with advanced alien life, or to drop off a resume, it's almost always one of these:
Et cetera.
Better?
You seem to think telling them no is wrong. What's wrong with saying no?
Brian, are we going to have to have another long, unpleasant conversation where you distort my arguments and I get angry and call you names? Because I'm game. You can maybe start by identifying where in my post, or any previous post I've ever made on this board or any other board anywhere on the Internet, where I've said or
implied that I think it's wrong to tell teenagers "no".
For the record, I have not worked with teenagers, but I was a teenager just a few years ago.
That's apparent.
There are way too many people saying you can do whatever the fuck you want, and not enough people saying no, due to self-esteem teaching bullshit methodology.
When grownups debate, they make points with empirical evidence, not impassioned diatribes, Brian. Quit wasting my time with this horse shit.
You create those three categories, but you don't want to acknowledge the fourth: they've been told, but they're too fucking dumb to get it. In fact, you could even dump all three categories into that.
No, actually, you can't, and if you'd done more than scan my post, you'd know that (congratulations on successfully counting to three, though). Let's examine them again.
1. He was never taught what constitutes approppriate dress at a job interview.
"Never taught" is not the same as "too dumb to get it" in my universe, Brian.
2. He was taught, but doesn't believe it actually matters.
This one's close, and in fact could concievably be too dumb to get it--or maybe it's his first time and he's about to learn the hard way. I guess it's fair, though, since I never mentioned that someone in this category could learn his lesson...
I, in the post you evidently didn't read, wrote:even those that fall under 2 and 3 will get it after a few blown job interviews
.
Oh. Never mind. Let's move on.
3. He was taught, but he refuses to because "it's not fair", "I have a Constitutional right etc.", "Fuck you", or whatever other justification he's come up with for attempting to push at his boundaries (which is what every teenager who doesn't grow up into a hopelessly dependent mama's boy does; some are just better than others at figuring out which boundaries to push).
This is not blind stupidity, Brian, this is
rebellion, something teenagers have been known to do from time to time.
That leaves the fourth category, which, in my experience, is very small. And frankly, if they're that dense, they're missing a lot more than a spiffy suit.
Anyway, let's get to the heart of the matter: what does it mean "you can wear what you want?"
Mike seems to think that means, you can wear whatever you want without consequences.
Quit trying to hitch your stupid ideas to other people's intelligent arguments. You're not fooling anybody.
Same as me. RI and Zac seem to want to divorce the consequences of clothing with the choice.
You're going to point out where I said that (Zac too, for that matter), or you're going to retract it, and you're going to do it in your very next post in this thread.
Under a microscope, no, you can very rarely wear what you want. You've mentioned RI that your female teacher colleagues dress conservatively, so their teenage charges won't hit on them. In high school, most cannot wear what they want, not if they want to fit in. School is an inevitable fashion show, with people dressing to impress others. That's the whole point of dress: to convey a message to other people. Teenagers, especially poor teenagers can immediately relate to that point of view.
Wait a minute. I thought teenagers were too stupid to grasp the nuance in "You can wear what you want" and would take that to mean "Go ahead and wear a clown suit to school if you want." Now it's "teenagers understand they have to dress a certain way to succede in their own social circles, but they're somehow blind to the idea they have to do the same to fit in other social circles"? Can you go 10 minutes without contradicting yourself, or is that like asking a cat to do trigonometry?
From this point of view, the point "you can wear what you want" only makes sense from a limited, legalistic view and not in the big picture.
First, I'll repeat that
neither I nor Zac actually said "you can wear what you want" full-stop, no qualifications. This is a strawman distortion--whether it's because you're too incompetent to read our actual arguments or too incompetent to address them, I don't know.
And even if that was what we actually said, do you
really think that me or Zac or anyone who isn't from the pocket universe where you can actually win a debate actually
means that in the strictest, most literal sense? For fuck's sake, when this started, I thought we were talking about teenagers wearing their "teenager clothes"--i.e., the clothes they wear to fit in with their peers--in inapproppriate situations. Apparently, you
actually think I meant it as "Go ahead and wear anything you feel like in any situation--you won't suffer any consequences for it".
Jesus Christ, if I ever had a teenager in my apartment, and I said, "Go ahead and have whatever you like from the refrigerator", would you think I meant he should go ahead and eat the
door?
If the purpose of dress is to convey a message to others, as me and Mike think, then there are very limited circumstances where you can wear what you want. Fashion choices have consequences.
Blow me, you shrill, pompous, self-righteous, stupid, illiterate, worthless waste of electrons. Then when you're done, you can point out where I said fashion choices
don't have consequences, or you can retract this, too.