Badly dressed and over weight English people

[Claustrophobiclown]

My sister, who has lived in Australia for years, was in England recently for an extended holiday. She was shocked at how many overweight, badly dressed and heavily tattooed people there were wandering around. I never really thought about it before, but looking at it afresh through her eyes I could see where she was coming from. I don't remember people looking like that when we were growing up, but we seem to have evolved into a race of very heavy and unhealthy looking people with absolutely no dress sense. Am I just misremembering my youth when I recall most people being a healthy weight and people generally dressing ok?

Plus it's too bloody hot to be running around outside in a lot of the country!

If you think England is bad you should see parts of Ireland that are like shameless.

You can dress up your post as concern for the general population but in reality you and sis just sound pretty judgy.

How can those affected by the cost of living afford to be smartly dressed?

1. The trend towards ugliness started long before the current cost of living crisis, and before Covid too.
2. Deliberately choosing ugliness is what ugly modern architecture does also. It's not a phenomenon unique to dress.
3. It's far from limited to poorer people. I see students in Dublin all the time who I know from their dress code are from middle class families. Dressing ugly is a deliberate statement from them that they're so cool they reject such petty judgmental bourgeois notions as beauty and it's the patriarchy anyway.
4. There are people right here on this thread who'll tell you they dress purely for comfort because they put on weight, often more during Covid, and feel they don't look good in anything so don't bother what they look like anymore. This is nothing to do with cost.
5. It's more than possible to dress well out of primark and charity shops. If you look you'll find influencers on Insta showing people how to do that. And I've known people in real life who've always dressed better than me despite spending far less money and in one case shopping only in charity shops. I hope you know similar people. I think almost everyone does, or at least used to before the current trend took over.

You also judge things, and people, as beautiful or ugly, you just imagine you don't because 'not judging' is the currently fashionable postmodernist attitude to pretend to have. Judgement is fundamental to human life and exercising good judgement was once considered a virtue.

Beauty and ugliness around us affects people's emotions and mental health. That's why ugly modern architecture, rubbish, lack of green spaces etc hurts people's mental health, while beautiful architecture, trees, flowers, lakes, clean streets help it. The people around us are just as much part of our environment as those things are and they affect us, and we them, in the same way. It's one of the reasons the ugliness has spread so widely.

So ugly and fat people should stay inside so as not to offend others with their hideousness?

In Australia l, 67% of adults are overweight or obese. In the UK, the equivalent figure is 63.8%

Op it's just clevedon.... I've been there. It's the land that time forgot.
It's about cheap food verses healthy food. Fried chicken shops at £1.99. Red bull full of sugar. People take convenience over proper food why are just eat and deliveroo so successful.
Re clothes. I'm male in my 50s and dress with a classic view. I think I look smart and it doesn't have to be expensive. In fact I bought a brand new suit this year for £25 tags on from a charity shop in clevedon!
I don't have tattoos because I didn't want a green faded blob on my arm when I reached the age I am now.... what is what some of my friends have

.

Not once you come down off the hill it’s not!!

Australia has a higher rate of obesity then then the UK(30% vs 25%)
The UK does have more tattoo though.

If I had meant that, I would have said it. I was responding to the many replies which said something along the lines of 'what business is it of yours what other people wear?'.

What we wear actually does affect both ourselves and other people in several ways. Everyone's had the experience of wearing something they don't like, don't feel good in, doesn't suit them, and that makes them feel bad. That radiates outward actually, through body language, tone of voice, everything, it affects others. So does the attitude about beauty and about others that people communicate when they deliberately make themselves as ugly as possible. So does simply the visual impact of people dressing horribly.

I hate to say it but she's not wrong. I see so many fat/obese teens now, it's really sad.

Haha! This 100%

Let's be honest this is just a slightly different angle for this week's let's slag off the Brits thread.

Yeah... try harder. I visit Australia frequently - say no more. 😂

Unless you and your sister are about 103, YABVU. Obesity has been a problem here and in Australia for decades.

Obesity was less of a problem everywhere 5 years ago than it is now. It was less of a problem 10 years ago than 5 years ago. It was less of a problem 40 years ago than it was 20 years ago. That's the nature of the constant increase. The ugly/slobby dressing and the tattoos is roughly an issue over the last 10 years and very much since Covid.

For the record my sister is not saying that Australians are any better. She just hadn't been home for a long time and was surprised at how heavier and more badly dressed people here were than she remembered.
Why are people so angry about that observation? It's quite true. I was looking at some old family and school photographs and it was very rare to see a very overweight person or someone squeezed into revealing clothes that made them look dreadful. People were slimmer and dressed with a bit more taste and awareness of what suited their body shape.

I’m Welsh and I don’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed that the OP used English people in her thread title when she obviously meant British people.

So @Claustrophobiclown you are now claiming that your sister is so stupid, she thought that Britain existed in a vacuum and everything would be frozen in time until she revisited?

She will have seen Australians getting fatter and more casually dressed, and presumably seen news footage from the UK? So this story still doesn’t hold any water.

Nope, she simply remembered British people from a few years ago were slimmer and better dressed, and not as heavily tattooed. Why the rudeness and anger? Surely it's something people should be interested in discussing.

Gosh you seem very obsessed with 'ugly' and 'slobby' dressing. Are you always that shallow? Personally I couldn't care less what people wear, it doesn't impact me at all.