Why does anyone care what other people choose to wear?
This week I’ve seen four articles floating around social media which beg people—yes beg people—to stop wearing a certain clothing item or to stop dressing sloppy.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot come up with a single good reason why anybody cares enough about what other grown adults wear to actually sit down and write an article designed to make people feel bad about their clothing.
Unless the article of clothing is offensive (i.e. appropriative from another culture, or with offensive words or symbols on it), there’s no reason to make people feel crappy about something that has literally nothing to do with you.
Or mind your own fucking business, thanks. –> Please stop dressing like a slob when you’re traveling. http://t.co/lVvQVTXojE via @slate
— joanna schroeder (@iproposethis) August 17, 2015
To those of you writing those “please stop wearing this” articles, I have some questions:
What happens to you if I wear leggings as pants?
Who says men can’t wear denim cut-offs? Who even made that rule?
What happens to the world if your neighbor wears cargo shorts?
What imaginary terrible thing is going to happen if some actor wears drop-crotch pants on the red carpet?
Why in the hell do you care if someone’s jeans are sagging?
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I want to be honest about the fact that I sometimes have judgmental thoughts in regards to other people’s appearances. How could I not? I live in, and was raised in, a society ruled by consumerism and celebrity worship. You can’t buy groceries without seeing trashy magazines with headlines like, “What was she thinking?!” skewering some celebrity for not knowing that her leggings were a tad bit see-through, or daring to wear a comfy pair of sweats to the grocery store at seven in the morning.
I’m willing to admit that because of this cultural influence, sometimes when I see people wearing something I think is a bit ridiculous, my first thought is, “Oh no! Don’t wear that!” in a sort of maternal, head-patting way.
Yes, it’s jerky of me. I know that. So what I try do is consciously remind myself that what someone else puts on their body has absolutely nothing to do with me. I don’t know their backstory, I don’t know their reason for choosing their outfit, I don’t know what’s going on in their lives, and none of that even matters. It’s. Not. My. Business.
Redirecting our unhealthy and unwanted thoughts is a great way to help us become the people we wish we were. Replacing a crappy thought like, “That looks so bad” with “Nobody’s body is my business” has changed the way I see the world, and even made me less self-conscious about my own body and clothing.
Practice makes perfect, as they say, and the more we practice being accepting of others for who they are—the things that matter, not their clothes or personal style—the better we become as people.
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Let’s be clear here that judging others’ clothing choices is oftentimes rooted in sexism; women’s clothes are “too sexy” or “too masculine” (read: not sexy enough), and are seen as too tempting to men and boys. This is complete crap, men and boys are capable of controlling their own behavior, and it is not up to women and girls to protect men from their own thoughts (or boners).
Wardrobe-shaming is also often connected to racism, too. White Americans love to make fun of what we see as “urban” styles, even when these styles almost always end up making their way into mainstream fashion eventually (often uncredited as to their origins).
Think of how white America still loves to “tsk tsk tsk” about young Black men in sagging jeans—sometimes even banning them, as Henderson State University in Arkansas just tried to do—despite the fact that this style has been around for more than thirty years, and was a staple even in my high school in the early 1990s, especially with white middle class teens.
Underwriting most of the judgment of others’ clothing is American elitism. We see people who don’t stay current as low-class, and for some reason we feel comfortable pointing and laughing at them. Think of how often your Facebook timeline features a share from one of those “people of Walmart” blogs, where body-shaming and making fun of people for being poor is the foundation of the humor.
It’s important to remember that keeping up with fashion is an expensive and time-consuming habit. Some people find fashion fun, and like to follow trends. That’s cool for them. Some may not feel that shopping and keeping up with changing trends is worth their time or money. That’s fine too.
At the foundation of all of this is the very American habit of thinking our opinions belong in other people’s lives and on their bodies. It’s time we stopped, took a deep breath, and let everyone else be the judge of what is best for them.
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Photo: Flickr/bobbi vie
I couldn’t disagree more with “wearing whatever you want to wear”. Are you going to the funeral for a close personal relative? Are you going to meet the governor or mayor? Will you be going to the Christmas service at your favorite place of worship? Pick that special function – will you go there with a grease stained shirt or pants? No. Will you go there without combing your hair? No. Will you go to any of those functions dressed in a bunny outfit? No. Why? Because you know that people will “judge you” based upon appearance. Is what is… Read more »
Good articlw about lwttinf go of judgement, joanna. Why people go out of their way to insert themselves into someone else’s lives, when yhey have no dog in that fight is amazing to me. It must be a mechanism to make themselves supior to others. Tp paraphrase MLK, judge a pwrson not by the clothes they wrar, their personal style of beauty and grooming, and their personal choice of fashion, but by the character they express.
Preach it! I’ve never understood how “Stop wearing X” articles became a genre. They’re all based on an absurd and self-obsessed presumption. Irene nails it with the high school comparison, and I can’t help but think the authors of this clothing police articles are still stuck in a pathetic high school mindset.
I think a lot of people are stuck back in high school days when what you wore defined who you were. Despite the years on the calendar, they remain hopelessly caught in the “what others think of me is more important than what I think of myself” cycle. Wearing dirty, sloppy clothing when you choose to take me out is rude, but it doesn’t make you an awful person, just unaware. Wearing cut-offs of any sort, shorts, non-matching colors or the rest is your own business and has no impact on me or anyone else. The exceptions: going on a… Read more »
Reminds me of someone I knew through a now-defunct blogging platform. She’s very enamored of early ’60s culture (think Mad Men or Mod Squad and you’ve basically got it) and she sharply critiqued so-called “sloppy” clothing trends of men and women for days and days. She could not stand men wearing belts under their bellies- generally, she wasn’t a fan of any men’s deadbeat casual clothes, especially if they were baggy and untailored. She really detested the jegging and yoga pants trends on women– she said they were appropriate for loungewear, but not for out and about around town. Generally,… Read more »