A [Fashionable] CIVIL War: A case for dress codes for social workers

By Cheryl L. Branche

Dress codes should be required for social workers. [Gasp] With the anything goes ideas of liberals, social workers are showing up to work in Muslim garb when not Muslim, complicated nails as though they are going to the club-all to mirror or mock Muslim leadership, to get attention and to provoke or express. Every social work organization needs to have a dress code to help clients know what to expect from the social work department and from the parent organization to present a recognizable brand through its public face.

After more than twenty years living at in an environment where there are social workers and having observed that when the leadership changes, the garb changes, I see the organization as having a fractured aspect of its public facing face, when the leadership changes from Christian to Muslim. Clients do not know what to expect when the social worker appears in Muslim garb one day and Christian garb the next. Exaggerated bright Muslim garb on day and complicated club fingernails the next or at the same time on the day after. The public does not know what to expect either. The element of confusion is disruptive for the clients and for the organization. Neither the public nor the clients know what to expect from the parent organization.

Times have changed. In earlier years when the leadership was liberal Jewish and Protestant, the attire was relatively consistent. What surprised me was how destabilizing the costumed social work supervisor is. The destabilization came in the form of being aware that the costumed staffer was mocking Muslim women and stimulating vulnerable, males who have no self-control or self-discipline in their faces. With the brightly colored costume and headwear were complicated nails in place of the more modest hands that Muslim women display, leading one to wonder if the social worker was at work or at the club or working with the clients as though being at a club. The affront to the Muslim women worldwide is insulting. What surprised me was the extent to which a staffer would go to get attention (everyone would gossip and look), in a field where discretion and confidentiality is expected.

Having a dress code would help social workers better represent their profession and themselves on the global stage and would control the overstimulation and confusion that many vulnerable men and women might feel when faced with such an appearance. Having a dress code would better represent a public facing organization. It would require the employee to keep focus on the the role of the employee within the organization and NOT as an individual. It would prevent a single employee from using costume and mockery to distract vulnerable people, undisciplined males who have little self-control. It would help stabilize volatile personalities when they can expect that what they see and what they get are consistent. In a world where Hollywood and Royalty are where many employees would rather be or fantasize about being, the mockery and drawing of attention is akin to a form of pimping/prostitution outside of entertainment as entertainment. A noble profession of social work might be better taken seriously if social workers dressed as professional social workers, as opposed to being dressed as something uneditorializable.

As a retired physician, I have worked and trained in environments where trust, prestige, discretion, and confidentiality are reflected in the attire of the professionals. Staffers did not bring attention to themselves as though they were Queen/King or Beyonce/Taylor Swift, who are required to be highly visible to the security detail. Bright colors, costumes, exaggerated accessories were considered distasteful and not representative of the serious profession of Medicine. Any attention to be drawn, was drawn to the organization and not its employees. As a retired person, I find the exaggerated costuming offensive. As a retired librarian and writer, I get to observe and write about observations and document my impressions.

The next time I meet with the costumed social worker, this retired physician might wear blue. Working on removing blue language (Think: cussing or “the vernacular”) from my thinking and vocabulary, wearing quiet blue, including blue accessories, while adding a simple pin to suggest solidarity with an affected demographic, to which the social worker belongs, would just a discreet, modest, and tasteful way of expressing a more, shall we say, tranquil sensibility, a [fashionable] CIVIL war. A CIVIL war has yet to happen.

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