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AIBU?

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Original poster

To be surprised that people are judged by the clothes they wear?

297 replies

JustGiveMeTheWine · 04/04/2012 08:34

Myself and DP went to do our weekly shop last night in the local supermarket.
We had both been to work then I went to the gym, he went running. By the time we finished it was getting quite late so decided to just go in our tracksuits then shower and change when we get back home.
We regularly shop in this supermarket so never gave it a moments thought until last night.
From the moment we walked in the security guard looked at us and got straight on his radio, then the whole time we were in there the staff seemed to be milling around us. Got to the checkout and the lady who served us didn't even speak until she wanted payment.
Then we went to the customer service desk (they had an offer on if you spend over a certain amount you can get disney cards for the little ones) only to be ignored! The lady actually looked at us then carried on talking to her mate!
By this time I was frothing at the mouth!

Did they think we were chav's intending to steal something just because we were wearing tracksuits???

OP posts:
usualsuspect · 04/04/2012 23:55

I'm an expert in jeans Grin

usualsuspect · 04/04/2012 23:56

I'm scared of S & B really.

scottishmummy · 04/04/2012 23:57

so usual if your mate suggests fanny pelmet and bat butcher make up to formal interview, you'd be like yeah cool whateva?no one judges clothes...

IAmBooyhoo · 04/04/2012 23:57

"The Op was talking about wearing a tracksuit, Would you have little respect for someone wearing a tracksuit?"

no

"Dressing up to me is wearing a clean pair of jeans tbh"

haven't you ever been to a wedding or funeral?

WhereYouLeftIt · 04/04/2012 23:59

garlicbutter, how very Pretty Woman of the shop staff ... but it just goes to show that they weren't very good at reading the signals that said 'buyer'; they were only looking for the 'can afford' signals rather than the 'design is important to me' signals. Pretty rubbish at their jobs, IMO.

DoubleGlazing · 05/04/2012 00:05

We all have to wear something, of course. So you go to the shops, buy the first things you find that fit, and put them in the cupboard. Over the next few days you put them on at random, whatever comes out of the cupboard first.

Day 1, you happen to put on something which most people would think very fashionable and smart. Day 2, a tracksuit comes out of the cupboard so you wear that. Day 3, you've got a goth outfit. Day 4, designerwear falls out of the cupboard so that's what you wear.

Are you "making a statement" that "clothes don't matter"? No, people will wrongly assume you are making a completely different statement every day. And of course that makes no sense as the whole thing is random and meaningless. Except of course you get to confuse people and their assumptions :o

garlicbutter · 05/04/2012 00:05

Lol. I once didn't get a job on Vogue because "I didn't quite fit in". Given that I knew all the staff very well, had been headhunted for the job and had carefully selected my outfit, hair and makeup according to their standards, this was unlikely. I decided it must be that I was the ONLY woman in their offices that day whose tights didn't match her shoes Grin

Just as well, really, I'd never have been able to keep up with tights in the right shades! Makes the S&B board look like fluffy kittens Wink

WhereYouLeftIt · 05/04/2012 00:06

"The Op was talking about wearing a tracksuit, Would you have little respect for someone wearing a tracksuit?"
"A tracksuit" is way too wide a description to give any information to me Wink attempts to channel Sherlock. Did it fit? Was it clean? Was it practical or one of those velour ones? What was the wearer's posture? Does the overall look say 'exercise' to me or 'fashion victim'?

DoubleGlazing · 05/04/2012 00:06

I thought Style and Beauty was entertaining until I realised they actually take it seriously in there Shock

garlicbutter · 05/04/2012 00:08

I agree, WhereYouLeftIt, very well put!

These days I'm poor, middle-aged and have developed a certain low-rent, off-frumpy style Grin Just enjoyed reminiscing about the pretty times ... and the judginess.

usualsuspect · 05/04/2012 00:09

Read the OP? all your answers are there , mind you shes as bad as you lot with her chav assumptions

WhereYouLeftIt · 05/04/2012 00:11

I hesitate to enter S&B - it's a scary place ...

IAmBooyhoo · 05/04/2012 00:22

"So you go to the shops, buy the first things you find that fit, and put them in the cupboard. Over the next few days you put them on at random, whatever comes out of the cupboard first.

Day 1, you happen to put on something which most people would think very fashionable and smart. Day 2, a tracksuit comes out of the cupboard so you wear that. Day 3, you've got a goth outfit. Day 4, designerwear falls out of the cupboard so that's what you wear."

ok so lets say for a moment that people do genuinely go to teh first clothes shop tehy find and bu the first items they reach in the shop that fit. is it very likely that in that one shop (and they only go to one because they dont care about choice or style) the will find on the first rail of clothing, a smart outfit, a goth outfit a tracksuit and a designer outfit?

but in reality we know that people dont do this and if they really didnt care about how they looked to others they would find a top and a pair of trousers that fitted and buy 10 of exactly the same size and colour because to them it onl matters that they have clothes and not what the clothes look like to others right?

IAmBooyhoo · 05/04/2012 00:24

usual you are totally misunderstanding what i and others have been saying.

IAmBooyhoo · 05/04/2012 00:25

and you didn't tell me whether you have ever been to a wedding or funeral. i wonder why? Wink

DoubleGlazing · 05/04/2012 00:28

You weren't supposed to take it literally :o The basic point is that even if you dress with little or no thought, you might still get assumptions made that you're somehow attempting to make a statement of some kind. Those top and trousers you mention - they could be wildly unfashionable or they could be the latest thing - and the person wearing them couldn't care less which, but everyone looking at them is trying to size them up. And I think that is sad.

garlicbutter · 05/04/2012 00:39

the person wearing them couldn't care less which, but everyone looking at them is trying to size them up. And I think that is sad.

So do I.

Anyway, you can tell so much more by looking at their nails and accessories Wink

IAmBooyhoo · 05/04/2012 00:39

i think unless you are given all your clothes by someone else and are totally indiscriminate about which ones you wear then yes, your clothes are saying something about you. and i think everyone makes instant judgements about people they see based in part on the clothes they are wearing at that time, even if it is totally subconscious.

try this, think of the last person you spoke to today that wasn't a family member. picture them in your head. can you honestly say you cannot picture what they were wearing?

scottishmummy · 05/04/2012 00:42

have you never looked at your dp/dc. and thought scrubs up well
never had a moment were you looked and thought yep lookin good

naughtymummy · 05/04/2012 08:08

Of course your clothes make a statement about you.
However we do not all or even most of us have free choice. We are limited by cost and praticality.

I have been to the supermarket in lots of different outfits (including having run there, and going in smart working clothes) I dont think I have ever been treated any differently.

Actually I think it depends on what I buy, if its a big family shop the cashiers are.gnerally a bit friendlier than if its just a couple of things.

DH and I were talking about this the other day and we decided that, in his workplace the scruffiest person in the room is usualy the one paying everyone elses wages :)

DoubleGlazing · 05/04/2012 08:57

"Of course your clothes make a statement about you."

Why "of course"? I think it's a good thing to challenge assumptions.

Clothes are inanimate objects and don't speak. People on the other hand, the ones who look at you, will often try to pigeonhole people by their appearance. But that's the people who are doing that, not a load of cloth.

scottishmummy · 05/04/2012 09:21

are you being purposefully obtuse?
clothes dont make articulated verbalized statement as indeed they are inanimate textiles. doh

but clothes are observable,visible set of items from which people form judgements. (don't bother bleating you don't judge) and the clothes one has chosen make a statement about the wearer.regardless of whether wearer asserts they care about clothes or not

Xenia · 05/04/2012 09:45

People use clothes for all kinds of purposes. I was just talking to one of my off spring who is about to leave for an interview (and is dressed very well as she's the best at how things look of all of us). It is fascinating psychology. Sometimes people want to blend in and not be seen. Sometimes they want all eyes on them.

The real problems I see from what my 20 something children say is when one of their contemporaries wears totally the wrong thing and eveyone knows but no one says (someone in bare legs for example where she last worked and all of them were too nice to take the girl to one side (she was there on a week work experience) and say - look at what other people wear and wear that. No one wanted to upset her. I think they should have done.

However if you make an informed choice not to bother that's fine too and one of the very nice things about English women which makes us much easier to live with and nicer as partners than say new Yorkers or Parisians is we do not fuss over and spend very long on clothes and looks because we are more interested in more important things. I hope that is retained in the UK.

IAmBooyhoo · 05/04/2012 09:47

a painting on the wall of your house is an inanimate object. nothing but canvas and paint mixed together in a frame. it can't speak but the fact you chose to put that painting on your wall says something about you. at the very least it says you think the painting acceptable to be seen in your house.

clothes really aren't just fabric. they are designs. each item you chose to wear will have been designed to create an image. when you go into a shop and choose a pair of trousers you are saying that the ones you chose are your preferred choice over all the other trousers in the shop. like i said upthread if fit really was the ony thing you based your choice on you would buy as many pairs of the pair of trousers that fit as you could afford because it wouldn't matter that they were all the same. right?

DoubleGlazing · 05/04/2012 09:47

No, I am not being purposefully obtuse. I'm pointing out how ridiculous it is to claim that clothes "state" anything.

Clothes do not "make a statement" in themselves. If clothes made a "statement", then every person looking at the clothes would receive the same "statement" or information and draw the same conclusions. But this is not the case. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Are you being purposefully rude? ("don't bother bleating...")

I'd never claim to be perfect or not judge people - but not necessarily on their clothes, as clothes are not particularly of interest to me. Any judging I have ever done is a fault of mine, not the person being judged. And I definitely do not see judging others as something inevitable and acceptable, like some seem to. I'd like to aim for something kinder than that.