The Standard
beauty standards are trash, but this might help.
DEC 10, 2024
I realize now, that I have conducted my own social experiment and I am kind of disappointed with the results. I will elaborate in a moment.
It is an important part of one’s personalty and persona to look good, because when you look good, you feel good. Dressing well or dressing like shit will give you a key or a locked door for many places in life. The psychology of this is linked to the idea that what you wear can affect your mental processes and how others might perceive you. This is also called ‘enclothed cognition.’
Dressing well can impact your confidence, performance, body image, self-expression, relationships, health, productivity, etc. It can positively represent you as someone who is confidence or sophisticated. It can help to identify you to others without saying anything.
Dressing carelessly can represent just that: carelessness or indifference, or in worst cases, a failure. And the psychological effect of this is that you might lose all these good things: confidence, performance, body image, self-expression, relationships, productivity, yes it can even affect your health.
Wearing clothes that make you feel good can increase positive energy and also project it outwards, which can make others feel good about you. Dressing in ways that make you feel capable of doing things you want to do can improve focus and performance, as well as create a positive image towards your own body and style. Because this is a form of self expression, as the fashion industry so profits from, this can also be a way of not only expressing yourself, but also finding the appreciation of those who share the same tastes as yourself. The diversity that clothing can have on the wearer is an interesting study as the symbolic meaning of clothes and the physical experience of wearing them can both impact what one might accomplish, or not.
Through my own experiences and studies I can acknowledge this as true, as I am sure you can too. When I dressed myself in college I often wore things that were fashionable and put a great deal of thought into what I was wearing. I cared about how I looked and that spoke for myself. People treated me differently, and I felt good and confident about myself.
When people view others their mental energy floats around the field of consciousness and can impact one positively or negatively. When people get together and talk about you, they create an energy field that can impact you, so it is important to present yourself to the world in a way in which you know will bring you positive energy.
For a long time, after I dropped out of college, I stopped caring about what I wore or how I looked. Most of this was due to my mentality in life, for I felt beaten down and careless, and I dressed to show that energy. In turn, I faced many trials with the people in my life and all of those of whom I lost. I stopped being ‘cool’ and just turned into a plain Jane sad girl. I didn’t realize that so much of this had to do with the way I presented myself. I thought, why do people care so goddamn much about what I look like? can’t they give a damn about anything else? And yes, they certainly can, but sadly, we live in a material world where societies across the globe have been doing this for centuries, since the dawn of our civilization.
If you dress like a king or a queen, you’ll most likely be treated like one, and if you dress like a peasant, you’ll most likely be treated as one.
In a perfect world, I and my philosophies would be acknowledged as valid and real despite the way I look or present myself. But this is not a perfect world. I have to play along with the games that we have created just to be able to have the space to say something, and even then, there might be someone who’s wearing something more fashionable and they might get more attention. Luckily I don’t give a damn about brands and trends and I am much more persistent than I lead some to believe.
This same thing goes for those in the art world, or any competition, any field of work, for that matter. For example, if you play along with trends, you get recognition. If you try to create things or wear things that are abnormal or out of the box, you will most likely be kicked there and ridiculed because of your abnormality or refusal to conformity, if you are in a position that requires a certain standard of appearance. In our new age, this out-of-box-ness is quite often applauded or profited off of and turned into trends, as so it pertains to the trends of acceptance amongst new spiritual movements as well as acceptance of colorfulness, but there are still influences that greatly impact one’s recognition or chances to be seen. Because most of this happens on the internet, they seem to be much more grandiose [than they actually are] as compared to movements and trends of the past. Where things can change in an instant, as oppose to movements happening over months or years at a time. This has both positive and negative effects; sometimes new information that is spread as fast as it is now can be quite harmful. Any way it goes, if you decide to dress like unicorn vomit on you or if you decide to dress like the office siren, there are benefits unto which you might receive from these very specific sects and niches on the internet or out in the world. Henceforth, go out and experience the psychological effect of your authenticity or uniformity. When one is dressed for the job they seek or have they are destined to feel prepared and ready to do so. When one is not, it is felt.
Despite the impact on cultural movements and authenticity, the fact that we have platforms to share things and change entire waves of humanity in instances is insane and beautiful. We just have to learn better ways of using this power. And tragically, especially in America, there is an issue amongst the education system which has so forth proven to produce more idiots than well versed and knowledgeable students of the earth. What’s even more tragic is that most of these people go on to maybe even acknowledge this truth and do absolutely nothing about it except blame the system. The responsibility that one must take on to heal this issue is great, but it is not widespread. I nearly defiled my own when I realized this truth.
And who knows, we might all be puppets in this ocean of trends and social experiments and movements. I just wanted to acknowledge that looking good is a good thing that you and I should take into consideration at most times in life simply because of the world we live within. I want to be taken seriously, don’t you? But life is not so serious, lighten up, right? The moral of all this is simple. Just wear what makes you feel good, and fuck the rest. Most people wear sweats or athletic gear everywhere nowadays, but I’m sure the trends will change. Just have fun with it. And fuck the fashion industry, they can keep their trends, I want nothing to do with it anyway.
