Every day is judgement day.
I judge people on how they look. If you have a nose piercing, ear stud, or tattoos, I will judge you. If you wear your hair long, I will judge you. If you walk around with a "LARGE BRAND NAME" sprawled across your chest, I will judge you. If you do none of the above, I will judge you.
What we wear speaks to other people before we do.
This isn't to say I'm entirely evil, however. I'm assuming that by leaving the house each morning, you are giving people the go-ahead to make decisions about you based on how you look.
Certainly, I make decisions about my bodily appearance based on what I want others to think about me. As decidedly cool as my hair might look in green or purple, I don't feel that I fit (as I perceive it) the social requirements for making this sort of change. Many people with unnatural hair color also adorn themselves with unconventional forms of bodily decoration, usually suggesting their membership of some social subculture. While the hair, to them, is an additional statement of their personality and belonging, on me, it would simply look out of place. I chose my clothes based on personal preference, comfort, and the messages I want to send to other people.
Let's talk about men. When I was, oh, twelve or so (mmm... puberty) I wanted to buy certain clothes at Dillards. My mom, however, proved herself an obstacle to what I wanted. Her logic (totally incomprehensible at the time) was that wearing certain items of clothing would send messages to other people. I was just concerned with what I thought was ‘looking good’. I was mostly oblivious to the fact that clothing sends messages, it seems, until I was in high school and started to build associations based on what people were wearing.
Case in point (ha), Case students seem to send different messages with their clothes than I remember from high school. In hindsight, it seems that 50% of the high school student population, on any day of the week, could be spotted in shirts with LARGE BRAND NAMES splayed across the front. I have come to associate certain types of behavior with these LARGE BRAND NAMES and therefore with people who wear them – rash decision-making, hogging sinks in the bathroom, little involvement in extracurricular activities (except for German Club).
Most of the people here at Case are able to pick clothing based on the messages they want to send. I see far fewer LARGE BRAND NAMES here than I did at high school and an unusually high incidence of nerd!shirts that usually take some specialized knowledge to understand. I will have you know that (regrettably?) I have changed from when I was twelve and reflect this in the way I dress. I understand that people will respond differently to me depending on what I wear because, whether I want to do it or not, I make judgments about other people based on how they dress. I do, however, abstain from letting these judgments affect how I treat that person, and hope that others could take the same courtesy for me.
What we wear speaks to other people before we do.
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