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 systems of physical appearance across cultures, sub-cultures and generations.
Adornment to me is the best way to portray yourself to someone. Like our assignment this week when we were supposed to make insights about people based on their appearance, I feel like in order to portray how I view myself to people I need to dress like it. And that is not to say that I dress in order to impress people, but rather I dress in a way that shows people who I am and how I feel about myself.
How I would describe my style would be in three categories; comfort, brand and stylish. I say them in this order because this is the order in which they are important to me. First comfort, I like to be comfortable in what I wear not only the material that I like to wear but what I feel comfortable wearing. Next is brand name, I pretty much only wear 3 brands; Lululemon, J Crew and Nike. I really like these brands and what they put out as well as how comfortable they are. The last category for me is style. I like stylish clothing, but what I think is stylish not what other people think is stylish. So my closet is not as full as my roommates and that is because I am extremely picky when it comes to the clothes that I wear around. I do not have any tattoos or piercings on my body mainly because I don’t want them but also because my parents disapprove of those things and since they are paying for my education at the moment I will listen to them and not cross them. The last thing that makes my adornment is my hair. I like to put gel in my hair because I feel more confident in myself if my hair is done correctly. That is my style based on my clothing and body art.
Now onto the choices that I make, which stem from two groups as everyone’s do: my family and my social group. First off with my family, they have preached to me since I was young to make my own decisions and not worry about what they thought of me because they will love me no matter what happens. This is hard for me to do though because I like pleasing people and showing people that I care so I like to make my parents and siblings happy by making choices that will please them, thankfully those choices are always in my best interest so it works out in the end. I come from a family where there is a lot of pressure put on ourselves to succeed, since both my parents are doctors I cant very well take over for my dad without doing a lot of schooling first. So because of this we are forced to try and succeed in our own areas of choice, mine being math and economics. My parents and family view this as a good choice for me because they see how talented I am at math and how truly passionate about it. So overall my family influences me more than anything but not because of the expectation they put on me but because of the expectation I put on myself to be as good or better than them. You can see how my family influences my dress or adornment by me trying to be comfortable in my own skin.
I am the baby of the family so my friend group or social group tends to be on the older side. I’ve always enjoyed hanging out with my brother’s friends because I feel like I fit in better. As well as being the baby I am also old for my grade so I got to do everything before my friends did. Because of these two things I have learned that true friends are hard to come by and that once you find them you should appreciate them. This is expressed through my dress by the comfort aspect; if I’m comfortable with you then I will dress like it and let you see me in my “natural habitat”. This is to say I wont always wear what I think is stylish around you or I wont do my hair sometimes. My dress and body adornment are very important to me, not because of what other people think of me but more because of what I think of myself and want to portray to people. If I do not accomplish that then well at least I like what I look like.
Reflection:
This assignment was two parts, first focus on how I viewed other people and what assumptions I could make based on there clothes and body adornment, and second to look at my own image and discover why I dress like I do. This was an eye opener to me because I do love to people watch but not to discover who they are but more to discover the differences in thought processes in different people. When asked to look at someone and make assumptions about who they are and where they are from was a new thing for me but a great experience none the less. I discovered that how you dress says a lot about who people think you are and the assumptions people make about them. So when I thought about my own appearance and how I wanted to be portrayed to people. And as Sanders says in the article, “a person’s physical appearance affects his or her self definition, identity, and interaction with others” (1). To me this means that how you appear affects your confidence and if you like how you look and are confident in it then people will see who you really are. That is what I discovered when I looked at my own appearance.
This assignment helped my fulfill the objectives of the artifact by seeing how peoples values translated to their clothing or appearance. If people truly know what their values are then their clothes and appearance will show that and can be seen on them. It really opened up my eyes to seeing people based on what they wear or their body adornment and not judging them but rather drawing conclusions based on them because I realized I wear clothes so people can see who I really am. But lastly don’t think that people are what you think they are, because I know that people arent always going to judge me how I want to be judged and I cant judge people solely based on their appearance.
Future:
I will continue to not judge people based on their appearance solely but realizing that you can gain a lot of insight into a persons life based on what they wear. I also will continue to dress in a way that I feel portrays who I am and not what society thinks I should be because in the end it only matters if you are happy.
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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