Dress for Success

We’ve all heard the saying before: “Make sure to dress for success!” For women in debate, dressing for success is deeper than just putting on a blazer, combing your hair, and calling it a day. It’s an extensive ritual. It starts with styling your hair perfectly, then painting your face to hide any imperfections, and it ends with you staring at your closet determining what to wear. If you wear something too tight, it’s provocative. If you wear a skirt, you don’t look serious. If you wear too much makeup you’re trying too hard, but if you don’t wear any then you’re unpolished. 

These are the thoughts that pass through my mind at 5:00am before every debate tournament while I spend hours in front of the mirror trying to find the sweet spot between too much and too little. Those thoughts are something that almost every female debater, or even every girl, can relate to.

Finnley Bonfig, a congress debater from Iowa City West, certainly agrees. She recalls how her coach had to approve all of her outfits before her tournaments. 

“He told me I shouldn’t wear a skirt, because I would be fighting my way to an even playing field, even at the beginning of a tournament.”

 Unfortunately, her coach wasn’t just being paranoid. Women are constantly given comments on their appearance. Another anonymous female debater shared a similar experience. 

“A judge wrote on my ballot that I was dressed “inappropriately” because my midriff was showing…I don’t think I’ll be able to get dressed for a tournament again without remembering that moment.” 

Even when they aren’t making comments outright, judges still carry an unconscious bias.

“My partner wears pants [to debate]...she always got more speaker points than me, but she’s not so much better than me that she would get top speaker awards and I wouldn’t,” remarked a local Iowa debater. A study from Science Direct reveals this unconscious bias, stating that “Women with a feminine outfit were rated as less intelligent, less competent and less likable.” 

Of course, that’s not to say that some judges don’t also prefer women to wear feminine clothes and to look more docile and submissive in rounds. Women are put between a rock and a hard place -- either wear feminine clothes and be seen as unserious, or wear masculine clothes and be seen as too aggressive. As Natalyia Kopack writes in an article for Equality in Forensics, “Even if you win the wardrobe battle with a judge, pink suits and more feminine attire are often discounted…but wearing masculine attire to avoid those comments could leave you with unfair losses.” Julia Low, a world schools debater from Texas, talks about her experience with this as well. “I have gotten comments [like] why do you wear pants or that’s not ladylike,” she says.

Inappropriate comments don’t just come from judges; competitors are guilty of it too. 

“A lot of people tell me that they see [male debaters] as more of a threat to winning a tournament than I would be, just because I wear pink,” Bonfig notes. 

The problem doesn’t just lie with local debaters -- it also exists on the national level. At the 2021 Tournament of Champions, the comments in the Zoom chat seemed less focused on the actual debate, and more on the fact that one of the competitors had streaks of pink in her hair. In an event where community is so important, these comments make the space unsafe and pushes women out of the event. The women who do stay are forced to either change how they dress or deal with the emotional stress of verbal attacks from their peers.

Not only does this inequity carry a high emotional cost, it also puts an unfair financial cost on female debaters. Bonfig remarked that “I [spent] a lot of money buying suits because all I had were dresses. I had to put a dent in the bank account.” 

Of course, while buying new clothes is a burden for both men and women, women have to spend on them compared to men. Women on average spend 37% more on clothes amongst other things, according to Forbes. And that’s not accounting for extra makeup or other beauty products female debaters have to buy in order to look “professional.” 

Dressing for success is an unfair burden placed on female debaters, but it doesn’t need to be that way. Bonfig talks about how her coach supported her by making sure her complaints were always heard. He was diligent about reporting problematic judges to the tournament and NSDA. 

“Being able to have that accountability, I think, is really important because otherwise, it just gets worse.” Creating a strong support group and having mechanisms to hold judges accountable is crucial in combating bias, and we can all contribute by supporting the girls on our teams. It’s especially important for coaches to listen to their debaters and be willing to fight for their debaters. 

Self-confidence is also extremely important when it comes to handling invasive judge comments. Bonfig continues, “I’m a good speaker, [and] once you go to enough tournaments, you build up that confidence…I know that I can win tournaments regardless of what a judge thinks of me.” 

While confidence is hard to attain for everybody, it’s especially difficult for women. A study by Forbes finds that when asked to guess their performance on a test, women tended to report their score 15 points lower than men even though they scored the same. After a frustrating RFD, it’s easy to get in your head and to feel less confident in yourself. It’s important to take a deep breath and remind yourself that you aren’t responsible for a judge's biased comments, and that no matter how many rounds you lose, you are still a worthy debater. It’s also important for us to support our friends, especially after tough rounds. 

Dressing for success in debate is different for men and women. For women, it means taking into account how the colors you’re wearing, or that pimple on your cheek, or the frizz in your hair will make you seem “unprofessional” to a judge. It means going out to the mall to buy a new suit, because your other dresses are “unprofessional”. It means waking up early to curl your lashes and powder your skin, because being bare-faced is “unprofessional”. It means destroying your hair with a flat iron, because curly hair is “unprofessional”. It’s up to us as competitors, coaches, and judges to change these ridiculous double standards, because a dress should never affect your chances of success.