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

[JustGiveMeTheWine]

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???

maybe you just look a little like someone who they have known to do shoplift

i was in hennes the other day and could hear the local security guards on the walkie talkies warning shop staff or a woman who was wearing orange jeans of being about, they said she hadn't been caught doing anything they were just making owners aware.

Xenia - I'm worried now as that's probably the first time I have ever totally agreed with you.

indeed we chose clothes appropriate to context,and societal,cultural demands

it simply doesnt stand to inspection to say, dont care about clothes or what people think. ir example certain brands are derided on mn eg boden, many emphatic they'd never ever wear boden?
why? because they know the impact clothes have, and that judgements are made on clothes.

double i think you are misunderstanding what some mean by the word 'judge'. it is possible to judge without making a negative or positive assumption. i think MN makes people wary of the word judge especially as it is usually used in the "got your judgypants on have you?" context but in the world outside of MN judging happens constantly without meaning that person thinks any less or any better of the person they are judging. when i say i make judgements based partly on clothing, that isn't saying i make personal judgements about how that person lives their life. it means that immediately on seeing them (the first thing most people have to get an idea of a person is their sight) my mind sees the visual clues they are displaying and makes a judgement eg; male, police officer, dark hair, walks with a slight limp. this tells me immediatey that this person is employed and that at some point he has injured his leg or foot. those aren't negative judgements they are just the automatic conclusions my brain comes to based on the visual clues i can see.

judgement is an appraisal
I look at dreich sky and judge do I need a brolly

I'm surprised that you're surprised that people are judged by the clothes they wear.

I've never been treated like that, and i live in jogging bottoms, and jumpers!!

IAmB, some people do. I find it very easy to decide a uniform and then it's annoying if the same shop doesn't stock that product in the same place or on the same site for the next 20 years as men's shops tend to do. It hinders women that we don't have the same facility for those of us who want to look okay but want to spend about minus 2 seconds on clothes.

Tbh I wouldn't have a clue if something was Boden or Primark just by looking , unless you leave your labels hanging out just so I know, like.

and when you decides that uniform is it based solely on the first things that fit xenia? do you give no consideration at all to how the items look on you?

i mean i can't for one second imagine that you (Xenia) only go to the nearest clothes shop and buy the first pair of trousers and top that you see. surely you gravitate towards a certain type of shop and a certain style of clothing (suits/jeans/trackies)

I think I would dump friends if they judged me on attire. I wear jeans/t-shirt every day . Easy peasy.
Never been to a wedding thank gawd but lots of funerals where the attire is requested to 'come as if you were visiting the child' (they are children's funerals)
Never been to a posh restaurant but if you had to swank up just to eat I wouldnt go.
DH is the same. some of his t-shirts are 20 years old.

but do you understand kal that you are still telling people something about you with your t-shirt and jeans? people can still tell things about you. they can tell you aren't interested in following fashion, they can tell you like a casual look. just because you aren't wearing a specific 'look' doesn't mean you aren't saying anything, whether you mean to or not.

i also think you are misunderstanding what people mean when they say judge (well misunderstanding me anyway). it isn't judge as in think less of someone. it's judge as in draw conclusions based partly on their clothing. the clothes make up part of the whole visual impression you get of that person. you brain makes instant judgements based on what you see.

i think it's the word judge that is causing people to misinterpret what i mean. on MN judge is a bad word.

A couple of years ago I interviewed someone for an office job. He turned up in jeans and T-Shirt. I rejected the guy partly because of the way he dressed.

For all I know, his casuals probably cost more than the successful candidate's Next suit but at least that guy made an effort.

Wearing casuals to a business meeting says this to me about the candidate. I'm not a conformist. I should be judged by my actions and not what I wear. Take me/leave me the way I am.

In my professional experience these kind of people are a major pain to manage. Hence his rejection.

So IMO, what you wear and where you wear it speaks heaps about your personality.

Iam, first I never voluntarily enter a shop ever. For me that is the first stages of hell and I'd have to be paid a lot to enter one. When I buy clothes on line which is very rare as I like to wear things until they wear out then yes I do look at whether I think they will suit me but it's 0.01% of how I am my looks. I genuinely don't regard it as particularly important. LIfe is too full tos tuff a mushroom etc. Far too much fun to be had on other things and it's a huge way women are kept down and men have more time to earn and get power and succeed because women are fussing over their appearance too much - it's the time spent which it the feminist issue rather than anything else.

I have not however disagreed with the thread - we look at others all the time and ssoon as they open their mouth we can assess if they are as thick as a plank, posh, common or whatever. Taller people earn more. Ugly people earn less. Fat people earn less. Obviously in many jobs it doesn't matter - 100% if behind a screen. No one would know if I were 30 stone or 7 stone on here

Have lurked to read the whole of this fascinating thread.

"clothes tell you what the wearer wants you to think about them"

Is used by clever thieves. This is a true story about a very smartly dressed woman in an extremely expensive coat who was stealing to order from an airport perfume shop ; she had special pockets sewn into her beautiful coat and they caught her because she always flew on the same flight.

I hate the way the shop workers look at you in those shops. Although I like to look okay when I'm out it's the small minded people who are very judgey and not worth worrying about actually.

The assumption made by some club and pub owners, that suits (worn by men) are indicative of ' being nice and sober' and trainers and neds (new word for me!!) mean the opposite, is another crass,stupid small minded generalisation and no one should frequent such places.

thing is booyhoo, because I dont notice other people's clothes I tend to assume no-one notices mine let alone is spending brain-time thinking about it.
But if they do think about it (and really, thinking about other people's clothes is weird), I guess they think 'there goes someone who puts on the nearest thing on the floor of a morning'

'there goes someone who puts on the nearest thing on the floor of a morning'

Yes, but how did it get on your floor?

At some point someone went to a shop (from a range of many available shops) and chose that item (from a range of available items).

I don't use conscious brain processing power to assess people's clothes (unless I have anything else to do or their clothes are particularly unusual/unsuitable/nice/whatever), but I would be lying if I said I didn't pay any attention whatsoever.

'there goes someone who puts on the nearest thing on the floor of a morning'

same here

it's still a judgement based on what they see though, right? that's all i'm saying. we all make judgements, not negative or positive ones but judgements/conclusions/decisions/whatever you want to call it based on what we see and clothing is part of what we see so it is used in part to form that judgement/conclusion. we all do it. we all glean information from people and store it subconsciously sometimes without even knowing we have given it a thought.

dont get me wrong, i dont walk down the street checking out what everyone is wearing, i'm usually mentally counting how much my shopping is going to cost or trying to remember if i put ds's uniform in the wash, but while all that is going on in my head, there is also a part of me that is noticing what is going on around me based on what i can see.

my best-dressed/made-up friend has confessed to envying me for genuinely not caring about perfect appearance.
On good days, she takes genuine pleasure in her (lovely) appearance - and I take pleasure in seeing her too. On bad days though it's like she's made her own cage to live in and so I think when she sees someone wearing no make up and not caring she feels a little envious.

My second-best-dressed friend however shocks me with her bitchy summing up of fully rounded human beings with terms that just relate to appearance - she will describe someone as "blowsy" for instance.

what does blowsy mean?

I have really had such experiences in life that yes, I observe what people wear, but rarely 'judge' as to how there attire reflects on them as a person.

Some of the most talented, richly humanitarian, funny and 'worth knowing' people I have encountered, may dress in faded denims and a seen better days t shirt..
Some of the most shallow, narcissistic and vacuous ones dress to impress..

I agree there can be times and places to dress to impress but I'd wager the majority of times that a person is judged for how they appear, it is a 'misjudgement'.

Quite an old-fashioned word, blowsy; I believe it means a bit sluttily-dressed.

never would have guessed that! i was having images of a big floaty sheer blouse.