I was in Honduras in the Peace Corps and they had to school us on how unprofessional shorts and sandals and ripped clothing are. We were a bunch of mostly white middle class kids fresh out of college where you would dress up only for church. They told us to open our eyes and look at how the people we work with dress. I wrote about this on one of my first essays when Bernie got grief for his parka and mittens.

I appreciate how you talk about how boys treat each other. Or maybe treated each other, because times change. In the 70s and 80s homophobia was so normalized that anything that made you look like you cared about your appearance might get you targeted as gay. I also grew up with a sort of admiration/disgust with the rich kids. These kids weren’t really rich, but they could get the name brand clothes and not hand me downs or goodwill. As an adult I’m suspicious of pretense. But I don’t think of my Honduran coworkers as showing pretense when they meet the basic requirements for decorum.