Why should I care what the Governor or the President of the US thinks of my dress?
This is not personally directed at you, stinkcat, but your comment here is a really, really good example of why there is so much discussion on ‘proper attire.’
For the last 50 years or so, Western society has made an concerted and well publicized effort to ‘cast off the shackles’. Whether it was burning bras (such a symbol of male bondage!) for women, or ‘dressing down’ (everything from countercultural solidarity to ‘comfort’ to ‘I do/wear/say what I want and to hades with anybody else’ for men), most people under the age of 50 or so have rarely seen, or experienced save as the vaguest personal memory or the anecdotes or pictures from older relatives/friends the idea (once universal) that clothes were ‘more’ than just coverings for the body, and that the idea was to stress not just respect for oneself as a person but respect for other people as well. The prime example was dressing for Mass. . .not to be snobby but to be ‘respectful’ both to God and to one’s brothers and sisters.
Of course, now all one is likely to hear is how "elitist’ people were, how shallow, how snobby, how concerned with mere ‘things’.
The whole argument starts from the unfair premise on the part of some (not all) of the “casual crowd” that ‘dressing up’ is all the above–shallow, snobby, elitist. They cannot seem to imagine that one could ‘dress’ with any other idea in mind!
Further, they cannot see how their own ‘dressing down’ comments are just as flawed in premise. . .that dressing down can as easily be judged as shallow, snobby and ‘reverse’ elitist as well. No, in their minds, ‘comfort’ is only for comfort, but ‘dressing up’ is ONLY for the shallow, snobby and elitist.
Very flawed thinking.
Now I will say that there are some who do the same thing (in reverse) and accuse the casual dresser of being shallow, snobby etc. And of course,
the casual dresser can be doing so for reasons which are not shallow or snobby. . .just as the careful dresser can do so for reasons not shallow or snobby.
But the problem is as I said that (for both), what starts the vitriol is that neither ‘side’ bothers to defend the other side.
Think about it. It’s one thing to have a discussion where group A says, “This is why I dress the way I do” and group B says, “This is why I dress the way I do”. Both sides are explaining their OWN REASONS. Which is fine.
But what we get is group A saying, “This is why Group B is so wrong dressing the way they do” and group B saying, “This is why Group A is so wrong dressing the way they do.”
And quite often group A is misjudging many individual group B people, and group B misjudging many individual group A people.
It is a great pity.
