The Ties That Bind

I decided to wear a tie while I was writing this. I also decided to wear an Oxford blue shirt, even though Oxford blue shirts still give me a minor case of the bends. From the second grade to the eighth, according to the dictates of the Sisters of St. Joseph, the Diocese of Worcester, and (as far as I knew) the Council of Trent, I had to wear an Oxford blue shirt and a dark-blue tie to school every day. Today, however, my tie is brown, with some diagonal stripes to it, and there is still something in me that wants to hide under my desk when somebody walks by.

I moved onto high school, where, for four years, according to the dictates of the Xaverian Brothers, the New England Province thereof, and (as far as I knew) the first Nicene Council, I wore a sport coat - not the same one every day, mind you, but almost - and a tie. I am not wearing a sport coat today, and there is something in me that wants to hide in a locker.

What I'm saying is, dress codes stay with you.

I mention this because dress codes are in the news again. In the interest of public relations, which can be fairly defined as "Reassuring the Gated Community Crowd," the National Basketball Association has decreed that its players will dress in what has come to be called "business casual" before and after games. There will be "dress" shirts, shoes not sneakers, and slacks or "neat" jeans. So far, though, the league has promulgated less of what it expects the players to wear and more of what they cannot. No sleeveless shirts. No sunglasses indoors. No headphones. (Are headphones attire or appliance? Discuss.) And, especially, no bling-bling. Dress closer to Ken Lay than to 50 Cent, the NBA is telling its players, although it doesn't explain its sudden preference for emulating corporate criminals rather than gangsta musicians.

This has prompted a spate of huffing from the players, some of whom have called the policy a racist infringement on individual expression. A hip-hop clothing concern endorsed by Allen Iverson has announced that it will match any fines he accrues for violating the new policy with donations to the Philadelphia guard's charitable foundation. Denver forward Marcus Camby - whose fondness for the bling as a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was a big part of why our state university's only Final Four appearance was expunged forever from the NCAA record book - even argued that the players should be granted a stipend in order to buy clothes that conform to the new standards. This occasioned much hilarity from people who wondered how much Camby's $7 million salary might buy at, say, Old Navy.

As a dress-code veteran, I watched the controversy with the same kind of interest with which I follow the periodic controversies over school uniforms. There is always a spate of justifications: They keep at bay the tyranny of fashion; they leave the mind open to concentrate on more important things, like the conjugation of avoir or the pick-and-roll; and they are the public expression of the discipline needed in both soldiers of the church and the Indiana Pacers.

What is not mentioned is what they actually are: an expression that We are not Them. What the NBA is saying is that the NBA is not Them, either.

For us Catholic schoolboys, the sisters used to say it flat out. When we walked down the street, we were told, people would see us in our Oxford blue shirts, and they'd know we were serious about school and not at all like those sloppy, jeans-wearing public school kids who used to fling horse chestnuts at us. They will know we are Christians by our love, and they will know we are Catholic by our ties.

Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer for the Globe Magazine. E-mail him at pierce@globe.com.