Now listen to part of a lecture in a sociology class on this topic.

(male professor)
I have an example from my own life that illustrates this. When I first began my university studies, I became friends with a bunch of art students. They were older and fun and very creative and I thought they were really cool. And they all liked to dress really casually, in T-shirts and jeans and sneakers. That’s what they wore all the time, to class, to the library, to dinner, everywhere, T-shirts and jeans and sneakers.So that’s what I started wearing, too . And I fit right in, and I felt really cool.

But then I graduated, moved to Chicago, and got a job. And I started working with some really bright, young people who’d already been working in the company for a few years, who were already handling major responsibilities for the company, really impressive. And sometimes some of us would get together on the weekend, maybe for a concert or a baseball game or something. And at first, I just wear a T-shirt and jeans and sneakers. That was, you know, how I was used to dressing. But I soon noticed that my co-workers preferred to dress up a little bit. The men would wear a nice pair of pants, uh, button-up shirt. The women might wear a fashionable dress and some nice shoes. They dress in clothes a lot nicer than what I was used to wearing.

And I started thinking, you know, that looks really classy, really sharp. And so I started to dress the same way they did, you know, nicer, a little more formal. And, I don’t know, somehow my T-shirts and jeans and sneakers didn’t seem as cool anymore.