According to my own values toward dressing, I believe different dressing will produce different feeling to me and other people. In my daily life, I will choose the style of dressing based on the places where I go or the events that I attend. When I go to school, my purpose of dressing is to make a comfortable feeling for myself. I will usually wear a shirt on the top and jeans on the bottom. Also, I will wear a hat and a pair of sunglasses during hot summer and a scarf and a pair of gloves during cold winter. In addition, most of the time of school days, I will not use make up. My belief behind my school dressing is that I believe a comfortable and leisure style of dressing will help me to be more concentrated on my study. Also, I think my dressing will let other students and professor feel comfortable. Sometimes, I will wear a watch on the right hand. In my value, I believe be on time is very important, no matter I attend a class or a meeting. I think go to class or meeting on time will produce positive attitude for myself and other people which will lead a more effective work. There will be a special time that I wear differently than usual which is presentation time. Every term, if I will make a presentation to the entire class, I will dress more professional like a office lady. I will wear black suit and a pair of high-heeled shoes. Also, I will use a little bit makeup. I think dress more professionally would show my attitude toward my presentation to other students and the professor. Also dressing professionally will provide a close-to-real situation for my presentation that I can have a real practice.

My dressing actually changed over time. The main reason for those changes is that I keep adjust my value all the time. I am international student and the culture and educational system are different in the U.S. The first thing I learnt after I arrived this country was how to adjust everything that I used to feel comfortable to match the new living environment. Almost everything in my daily needed to be change to allow myself study and live better in this new country such as culture, language, food, weather and the way of communication. Of course, one of the most biggest change is my dressing. In my high school in China, I was required to wear school uniforms all the time and I never thought about dress up and use makeup. However, after arrive the U.S, I can wear what I want to make myself feel comfortable. To other people, this change may just related to change daily clothes. But to my value, my attitude toward study and life actually changed that I started to study and live by myself not with my parents.

The values and beliefs of my family do affect my dressing and body adornment a lot, especially when I was small. During my high school year, my parents did not allow to have a long hair. According to the value of my family, they believed that long hair showed free and informal feeling which was not respectful in schools. Both my parents are professors in the university, my mother never allow her hair to become too long. Also, my parents never wear fashion style dress and in their value, professors must produce a positive images to the students that education is serious and both professors and students cannot wear what they want in campus.

In my peer community, I think the core beliefs and values are friendly, academical  and career focused. There are many students living in my community and all of them want to be friendly to other people and want to be successful in their education and career life. Some of them, especially those business students, will dress in a fashion style which looks more formal. They want other people to feel their confidence and believe they can study and work very well. There are also some professors living in my community. They will also dress very professionally such as wearing a suit and other more formal clothes. I think the dress and body adornment reflect the value of my community and also reflect the value of different people in my community.

My value today actually become a combination which including value from my family, my education, my experience, my friends, and my living environment. I believe the core value of dressing will not change. However, I will keep making adjustments for my dressing to fit different situation that allow my dress and body adornment show my positive attitude toward work and life.

Reflection:

From this artifact, I received a very good opportunity to evaluate my personal adornment. Before creating this artifact, I started to think about my personal values, beliefs as well as my culture traditions. I also thought about how those values reflected with my dressing behaviors. In addition, as an international student, I also thought about how my personal adornment changed after living in a new country with new culture and language. From the reading, I learned that personal adornment will affect people’s behaviors and appearance. Sanders stated in the reading that “A person’s physical appearance affects his or her self definition, identity  and interaction with others. People use appearance to place each other into categories, which aid in the anticipation and interpretation of behavior, and to make decisions about how best to coordinate social activities.”(Sanders, 1)  Sanders’ article actually provide a better viewpoint to evaluate my personal adornment and help me to finish this artifact. By creating this artifact, I learn better about myself and I experienced the process of changing my personal values, beliefs as well as my dressing.

This artifact also help me to better build my identity and enhance my understanding of physical beauty. In the process of creating this artifact, I evaluate myself and build a better understanding about my personal values and beliefs. Also, I had a chance to know how my appearance will build my identity and show my personal adornment. I think most of the people will build first impressions toward other people by watching other people’s appearances and behaviors. This is why dressing and appearance are important for people, especially in people’s career life. I believe appropriated dressing and appearance will help me to produce positive attitudes from other peoples and help me to success in the future.

Learning Goals in The Future:

 In the future, I will continually track the changes of my personal adornments and keep improve my dressing and appearance. Also, I will enhance my understanding about art of personal adornment and practice in my real life. Also, I want explore deeper about different opinions and thoughts from people toward different appearances.

Bibliography:

Sanders, C. R. (1989). Introduction: Body Alteration, Artistic Production, and the Social World of Tattooing. In Customizing the Body (Chap. 1). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

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