"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." -Oscar Wilde

The skirt in question

Last Wednesday, I wore a wool skirt to work. When I clothed myself in the morning, it felt as innocuous as that last sentence. I wear skirts to work now and then and certain pockets of our office dress fancy on a daily basis (i.e., finance and marketing).

The skirt did anything but camouflage.

It started with a "Wow that's a nice skirt," and was followed by an "Aren't you dressed up!" Both times, "Thank you," felt like an incomplete response. The compliments were positioned as statements of fact, but implicitly begged for an explanation. To both, I explained  the reasoning behind my outfit.

Less than five minutes later, someone else came to my desk: "You're all fancy and shit." No further questions. "Nice skirt," in passing and "Here's that skirt that I love!" in the kitchen. By lunchtime, I was praying that the storm would settle. Instead, skirt well-wishers were stationed at lunch, in the bathroom, and in the elevator. Halfway through the afternoon, our CEO and I almost collided as he walked out of his office. We apologized and I walked away. After I turned the corner, he yelled, "Nice dress!" Feeling as if everyone was in on a big joke, I sat down at my chair and rolled it as far under my desk as possible. Three minutes later, someone passed by chuckling. "Job interview?" It was as if nobody could see me past my skirt and I wondered if I should have just changed in to it after work.

The afternoon flew by, and when 6:30 rolled around, I packed up for the day. As I was walking out, my friend stopped me at his desk. "I wanted to tell you that you look really nice today." "Thank you," I said without anything further. "The skirt, the shoes." "Thank you," I said again with a thankful nod. I could feel his wanting to know why I was so dressed up, but he couldn't bring himself to ask. Without explaining, I exited.

Walking to the light rail, it dawned on me that every single person at my company knew where I was going. 

I hadn't meant for my skirt to be a "story of the day," so when it became one, it was profoundly unsettling. Not a single person had explicitly asked why I was dressed up, though they all had assumptive tones ("Probably a date, an important meeting, a special event..."). To dispel their incorrect hypotheses, I "voluntarily" shared my plans with all of them. I didn't mind sharing, but the way in which we got there felt unnatural. Like I was bragging or something.

If you think about it, these same assumptions must exist when people see our virtual updates (tweets, instagrams, posts, etc.), but the assumptions are completely invisible to us. Our screens provide a barricade between truth and speculation. A plain "Like" or "Favorite" is without the tone of an in-person "compliment."

Most eye-opening to me was seeing in real-life how, with one simple trigger, things spread fast.

Last Friday, when Justine Sacco became a world-wide sensation, she was on a plane (with no internet) to Africa. I doubt even she will ever really know what was going through her mind when she  composed her Tweet, but she likely expected it to be as fleeting as choosing your outfit in the morning. What she crafted with seeming rapidity was unfit to be taken at more than face-value. But where her story ended when she pressed "Send," the story only started for her audience. The layers of her statement, including that her father is in fact from South Africa and that she's actually a "decent person at the core" were not captured within those initial 140 characters.

 Justine, like my Wednesday night plans, went from tame to trending news via one simple statement (a choice of skirt in my case, and a something curt in hers).

As we rely more heavily on the internet as a form of self-expression and social connection, it's easy to forget that the implications of our statements extend farther than the statements themselves. We miss that behind these machines, screens, character limits, and tags are creative, opinionated, sensitive people. Curious ones who desire detail -- explanations, clarification, perspective -- that they will create for themselves when it isn't provided explicitly for them.

We crave stories; we read into everything.

When I came in to work on Thursday morning, my friend stopped me again at his desk as I walked by. "How was it last night?" He asked with that Holmes-esque satisfaction of solving a difficult mystery. "It was amazing," I said unfazed. I gathered he had seen my Tweet. "I was going to ask you where you were going last night when you left, but you were already headed out the door," he said. "I figured I would just see it on Facebook or something." I would have done the same.

One of my favorite teachers once advised, "Don't share something with someone unless you wouldn't mind it written on the classroom whiteboard." The advice is as relevant today as it was thirteen years ago: If I can't imagine myself standing up in front of my entire company, dressed in my fanciest skirt, explaining the entire story aloud, I'm not Tweeting it, I'm not blogging it, I'm not Facebooking it. It could have saved Justine, and it will certainly save you, me, and the principle of social decorum.


P.S. To truly conclude this story, it's important for you to know that my skirt was for this.