Dress to Kill

I was watching an interview with Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago when something struck me. She was dressed to kill, as most high-level executives are, while Mark Zuckerberg looked like a schlub in a hoodie, as usual.

I have never liked the hoodie look for him as it is vastly inappropriate for a CEO. I don’t care that he started Facebook as a college kid or that his company is a sort of casual, fun, frivolous thing. If you are in charge of a company that is, despite its stock tumble, still ridiculously valuable, dress like an adult. I’m sure you can manage.

What bothers me about Zuckerberg’s hoodie is that it’s clearly a Look trying not to look like a Look. They had it right in The Social Network when one character called out Zuckerberg’s “fuck-you flip-flops.” It’s self-conscious but trying not to appear as such.

Anyhoo, the contrast between Sandberg’s professionalism and Zuckerberg’s slovenliness stuck out. I had to wonder if a woman at the top of a company would be taken seriously if she slouched into the office in a hoodie. Probably not.

Maybe it’s an age thing. Sandberg is in her early 40s while Zuckerberg is in his late 20s and while we can forgive the sweatpant aesthetic in a relative youth, we can’t forgive it in someone entering middle age. Then again, by the time I was Zuckerberg’s age, I already knew how to dress like an adult and go into work.

People have deeply inappropriate ideas of what to wear to their office jobs. You don’t have to be fashionable but it doesn’t take a fashion sense to realize that hoodies are a lower grade of clothing. You might not have the fashion sense to know a bad suit but you probably can still differentiate a suit from a sweatshirt.   

I know, I know: It takes a titanic effort to put on real pants and shoes every day and leave the house and sit at your desk all day. Unless you have physical issues preventing you from wearing these items of clothing, or work at some job where you’ll get dirty, suck it up and dress like an adult. A little discomfort won’t kill you for eight hours and then you can look like a slob when you get home.