You know you can’t tell a book by its cover. But I wish you could. It’s so confusing. I once hired a babysitter who was dressed like a nurse on the interview. She looked responsible, educated and she said she was coming from her job as an x-ray technician. She showed up for work the next day in high heels, a mini skirt and tight top. Now this wasn’t the same person I hired! I was tricked! But no, I really wasn’t because she ended up being the best babysitter ever. So she tricked me twice, proving you really can’t judge a book by its cover.
But despite this, we do judge each other by what we wear. Here are some things our minds say to us when we see another person:
1)This woman’s here to meet a man.
2)This woman’s respected in her profession.
3)This woman’s angry. (probably at her husband or parents or boyfriend or men in general or the economy, etc)
4)This woman’s scary.
5)This woman doesn’t want to be noticed.
6)This woman is like me.
7)This woman’s wealthy.
8)This woman has a stud in her nose. I don’t know anything about her. Can’t stop thinking about the stud. So maybe it’ll have to be just seven things clothes tell us about others.
And maybe all these things aren’t even true anyway! Maybe these clothes are just facades, hiding the true person inside. All we can tell is what other people want us to believe about them. But that says something, I guess. That gives us a clue as to what the person values. Still confusing.
But I know one thing that is definitely true because Mark Twain said so. He said, “Naked people have little or no influence on society.” Perish the thought that we’d have no influence on society!
So we put on our clothes, choosing what message we want to give and hoping that message is the one others get. And after feeling really good about ourselves all day, we come home and notice that spot of lipstick on our tooth that nobody told us was there. What was the message they got? This person’s sloppy or careless? No, the message they got was this person is human. And I guess that’s not such a bad message after all, right? And there’s the eighth thing clothes say about us.
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Very well said, Maria! I ponder this idea a lot, about what our clothing choices say about us. My husband is in theatre, and the costumes they wear to carry the character they are playing give us many clues about that character. Well, it’s the same in life isn’t it?
Thanks for your thoughtful post.
Very insightful…. I had not really thought about it but it makes a lot of sense. I will certainly put more thought into what clothes I wear!!! And..so true about the lipstick!