Published 2004-09-15T00:00:00Z”/>
Amelia Sekhon<br>Staff Writer
Cynthia Siemsen understands that being well dressed is the key to success.
“I have come to understand the importance that fashion plays in our society,” said the assistant sociology professor.
Style is thought of as an expression of one’s personality or just the message that they want to convey to others, Siemsen said.
She said she would like to think her fashion style is an expression of her personality, but she believes it also an expression of her career.
“The way I dress has a lot to do with the fact that I am a professor,” Siemsen said. “I have to dress a certain way so that I am taken seriously.”
She said she was taught early on the requirements of dress as a professor, and unfortunately there is a much different standard for female professors than male professors.
“Often male professors can wear jeans with a collared shirt and it is acceptable,” Siemsen said. “But female professors are expected to dress in a much more professional way.”
Siemsen said she is confident with her knowledge and her ability to speak as a professor; her clothing just adds to the image that she wants to demonstrate as a competent, professional and still fashionable professor.
“We all use clothing as a prop in our lives,” Siemsen said.
Siemsen said she views fashion as something very confining in terms of expressing one’s personality because of economics and how expensive clothing can get.
“Fashion is something that has become obsolete because of the amount of money that people find themselves spending,” Siemsen said.
Fashion has also contributed to problems in our society, Siemsen said, like women needing to expose themselves to sell products, men and women feeling the need to fit a certain body type and models who are anorexic.
Society and fashion have made it so that if you don’t fit the socially acceptable norm of having a terrific body, fashion is denied to you, she said.
“In our society, we all shop at the same places and buy the same things,” Siemsen said. “So it starts to express our culture, not our personalities.”
Amelia Sekhon can be reached at