My husband and I enjoy watching old films from Hollywood’s Golden Age. The stories are usually well-crafted, the women beautiful, and the men darkly handsome. But the thing that fascinates me most is the crisp tailoring of the clothes, the hats, the gloves, and the truly adult silhouettes. Ah! To crown each outfit with a fabulous hat! Draw on a pair of supple kidskin gloves! Toss a fur scarf around one’s neck! So glamorous. This was not confined to the artificial world of the movies, either. YouTube has tons of old footage taken by amateurs on the streets of major cities. Women stride along in pumps; men wear suits and ties. Even photos of old baseball games show well-dressed fans, decked out in what we now would call formal business wear, complete with hats. People dressed up to present themselves to the world. But things have changed. I have had reason to take several plane trips in the past few months, which have taken me to various airports all over the country, and I’ve come to the conclusion that America is now the land of the slob. Nobody seems to take a look in the mirror before they travel. Pajamas and slippers are commonly worn on airplanes by both sexes. Actual structured footwear is seldom seen; most people are wearing flip-flops, sneakers (often with laces undone and dragging), and the ubiquitous Crocs. (The exception was one woman I saw in gleaming red patent leather stilettos. I didn’t get a chance to see her try to walk in them.) While one occasionally notices a businessman in wing tips and a long-sleeved shirt, more common attire is hooded sweatshirts, tee shirts, and sweat pants. One young man, with a high-and-tight haircut that marked him as a military recruit, had on a pair of oversized jeans with legs so wide they resembled a pair of skirts. He’d trodden on the hems so much that long ribbons of fabric snaked around the floor as he walked. I worried about him getting onto an escalator. Now that it’s so expensive to check bags, and heaven forbid having to wait ten minutes at the carousel to pick them up, people resemble pack animals as they drag their carry-ons, bending under their enormous, stuffed-to-the-gills backpacks, while the gate attendant cautions that “one carry-on and one small personal item” are what they should be bringing on the plane.  I understand that comfort is important when traveling and I certainly don’t dress in a suit and heels, but, from my perspective, the “athleisure” trend has been taken much too far. As we prepared to brave the gauntlet that is the Transportation Security Administration’s checkpoint at Reagan National Airport the other day, I noticed a young woman, clad only in a pair of spandex athletic short-shorts and a sports bra, unloading her stuff into plastic bins. She looked as though she should be launching herself into a gymnastic floor exercise, not about to get on a plane. It’s alleged that a significant contributor to the relaxing of dress standards was John F. Kennedy’s hatless presidential oath of office in 1960. Truly that was a watershed moment, but he did wear a top hat to the inaugural ball. His wife Jackie wore hats and gloves but even she had given them up by the end of the decade. The sixties also brought blue jeans, formerly the pants of choice only for 1950s rebels and blue-collar workers, into the mainstream. Denim suits were even a trend in the 1970s.  I admit that I wear jeans nearly every day. My mother never wore them and my father only when he was mowing the lawn or working on the car. (Times definitely have changed. I looked at a $378 pair of Ralph Lauren jeans recently — nope, I wasn’t paying that, but one of my daughters probably wouldn’t hesitate.) A rare sight is someone dressed in well-fitting, attractive, appropriate clothing. As I stood waiting for my luggage one day, I told one woman, “You’re a sight for sore eyes. You look lovely.” She wore an ensemble of trousers, a top, and a long jacket in burgundy knit. A sleek pair of impeccably clean black sneakers coordinated with her black leather tote. She looked fabulous, a standout in a sea of scruffy, sloppily attired people staring at cell phones, with earbuds isolating them from their fellow travelers. And perhaps that’s the real problem. Personal electronic devices with content designed only for the viewer, delivered by isolating headphones, create the illusion that one is an entity only to him- or herself. Gone are screens on airplanes, replaced by clever plastic doodads that hold passengers’ cell phones or tablets on the back of each seat. Flight attendants have to plead with patrons to pay attention to their safety presentations — nobody bothers to remove their earbuds long enough to listen. It seems to me that, just as your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins, your right to dress in whatever you want has a limit when you enter my field of vision. I have been told this attitude of mine is judgmental, old-fashioned, and just plain wrong, and maybe it is. But one would think that with all the social media content on how to dress, we’d see fewer adult women carrying children’s backpacks and wearing sweatshirts adorned with Disney princesses, and more gentlemen wearing proper shirts and pressed slacks.  Sure, it’s great that we have so many options when it comes to clothing, and we are no longer tied to the ironing board since man-made fibers have created a wash-and-wear world. Many people don’t even own an iron. But is it such an imposition on individuality to consider, just a little, the way others will view you? Would it be so terrible to coordinate your outfit and opt for a grown-up, somewhat sophisticated presentation? Is it really that difficult to don clean, attractive clothing when you go out in public? I understand the way many standards have slipped but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, or that I have to like it. Years ago, my Los Angeles-area high school was invited to celebrate Grad Nite at Disneyland. And there were dress standards. Boys had to wear a shirt, tie, and sports coat or a suit. Girls had to wear dresses or pantsuits. The Disney folks had found that people behaved better when they were dressed up. With all the problems with behavior on planes these days, you’d think airlines would follow suit and consider a dress code for passengers.  But no, such a requirement would be called out as insensitive, sexist, impossible to implement, and, of course, racist — though it is none of those things. The pendulum toward selfishness has swung too far to even allow the suggestion that someone is inappropriately dressed. Even clothing adorned with what used to be termed foul language gets barely a glance. So, I go about my business and bury my nose in a book when I embark on plane travel. I remind myself that to judge is un-Christian. I know very well that the only behavior I can control is my own. However, I do long for the days when formality in dress and behavior was revered and appreciated, instead of ridiculed and ignored.  READ MORE from Cari Clark: Teeing Off on ‘Trad’ Wives I Wish We’d Been Wrong on Disney The post America: Land of the Slob? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.