Unit 5: Personal Adornment
Unit Objectives:
- Evaluate personal values and paradigms around body decoration and physical beauty.
- Investigate how physical appearance affects definitions of identity and belonging.
- Analyze values and belief system of physical appearance across cultures, sub-cultures and generations.
Example piece of work:
Reflection on piece of work:
The reason why I chose the personal reflection regarding adornment is because while writing my reflection I was able to get a broader realization of how people might categorize or identify me through my clothing. Also, by examining what I wear I found myself to be more bias when identifying other people who dress similar to me. For example, I wear a lot of athletic wear (seen below) because it is functional to my lifestyle, which is very active, however I am not just a jock. My life is full of many other things other than sports and working out. I do not wear athletic wear all the time because sometimes I feel like switching it up or I will be doing other activities which make athletic wear less functional, such as skating (seen below). With this unit forcing me to observe other people and what they wear has made me realize that many people think I’m just a jock due to identifying me through my clothing. This personal adornment reflection has made me slower to make a judgment on somebody based on what they where. By doing this I was able to meet a couple of the objectives listed for this unit. In the future to help broaden my understanding of adornment and how it relates to peoples personalities I would go to different social events and observe what people where.
In this picture I am wearing just some of many athletic/training clothes that I usually wear around campus and when i exercise/train. Based on my adornment if you saw me on the street you would probably assume that I was a gym rat/jock and that I value health a lot. However, just like many other people I have other hobbies, which I wear completely different clothing.
In this picture I am wearing just some of many other street clothes that wear when participating in my other hobbies, such as skating. If you saw me in the street wearing these clothes you would probably assume that I like to party, destructive, and have bad health, which is completely different than what you would assume from my other picture. I posted these pictures to contrast two of my lifestyles proving that categorizing people based on their adornment can be inaccurate because people have many levels to their personalities.