What are you wearing today? Recently I watched the Abbey Players’ rendition of Guys and Dolls, which I highly recommend. I have never willingly seen a play or musical on my own time because I never thought I would really enjoy them and, frankly, I only saw Guys and Dolls because of my love for Sinatra’s rendition of “Luck be a Lady.” When I went last Friday night, I was completely blown away, enough to bring me back again on Sunday. If you are not familiar, Guys and Dolls takes place in 1950s New York. I could go on about the content of the musical all day, but the setting is more important for this article. To make the performance more authentic to the time, the men dress in well-tailored suits and the women in long skirts or dresses (depending on the scene). Even when the characters do not dress in suits or dresses, the outfits are undoubtably dressier than today’s common outfit. While watching the musical, I kept comparing the dress of that time to today, and honestly, I was disappointed in the fact that today’s common dress is neither enjoyable nor presentable, rather it is just casual. You may be asking why it is even important to dress up. While I could say that dressing well builds confidence and may help with potential private and vocational opportunities, the real reason for dressing up is for others. After all, there’s a reason people say that one should “dress to impress.” Without other people living in our midst, good style would merely be a way to shield from the sun or the elements, not impressive at all. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the clothing we wear tells everyone around us a message. When people wear sweatpants, sweatshirts, t-shirts, or clothing with obvious branding daily, they tell other people that they care about whatever their clothing says, they value comfort over class, or they are about to go workout. There is nothing wrong with dressing to do work or physical activity, but one ought to always dress to the occasion. In the same way that one should not wear a suit to work on a car, one should not wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt to class. To appropriately dress for school, you must show to the professor and your peers that you care about what you do in the classroom. In the same vein, if a professor were to walk into my class dressed as most of the student body and young adults do, I would ask myself “who is this school hiring?” or “what is this guy doing?” I am not necessarily saying that all men should wear tailored suits and women should wear long flowing dresses, though it would be nice if we got back to the tradition of doing so. Rather, I am advocating for all of us to care about our presentation more than we do now, even if that manifests in just a nice pair of jeans and a sweater. The only time where people dress up should not be for so-called “formals”, in which people dress the best they can— just to huddle into an apartment and drink for hours. While “formals” may be a whole other subject to unpack, it shows that everyone has somewhat of a desire for better dress. After all, “formals” are low stakes and completely voluntary. If you have the desire to throw together a classy outfit for a night where you might not even remember anything that occurred, why not dress in a similar way daily? All I ask is to think of how and why you dress the way you do, then try to be more intentional about the outfits you wear on a daily basis. But who knows, you may need someone closer to you to convince you to shape up and care about your presentation a bit, as it says in the song “Guys and Dolls:” “When a lazy slob takes a goody steady job/and he smells from Vitalis and Barbasol/ Call it dumb, call it clever/ Ah, but you can give odds forever/ That the guy’s only doing it for some doll!”