to ask if you care about appearing conventional?

[thatsgotit]

And if so, why?

Inspired by about a zillion threads on MN, though not directly a TAAT.

My own answer: outside of the norms of my job (which are pretty relaxed anyway), I don't personally care so much whether people perceive me as conventional or not. I don't think that makes me special or superior or anything like that - nobody is better or worse than others simply because of the things they do/don't do. I just don't care very much personally about whether people think I'm 'weird' for not following certain conventions (and similarly I don't judge others on whether or not they appear conventional), and am curious why it matters to some.

Again, I'm talking about outside of holding a job or progressing one's career, where obviously these things matter more.

Thoughts?

YABU = it matters
YANBU = so long as you're hurting anyone, it doesn't matter

Heartfelt thanks for not wasting our time with even a conventional pretence of friendship. Means we have more of it to dedicate to our lovely real friends.

From a blue haired person.

Can you be more specific?

Well, the common denominator in all these interactions would be you...

Net progress is net progress.

It's the sum of gains accounting for any losses, side effects, or necessary costs.

It's not progress without any trade offs.

I genuinely don't care any more if I look conventional or not. I wear what I'm happy and comfortable wearing, sometimes it's conventional, sometimes not traditionally so.

It's quite hard to think of any contemporary clothing that's genuinely unconventional, as even 'alternative' clothing tends to follow a particular aesthetic - goth, hippy, steampunk etc. - and in a way it's just an alternative uniform to what might be called 'conventional' jeans and t-shirt or whatever.

To genuinely stick out in the average public place you'd have to dress in armour or a squirrel costume or something. Blue hair, dungarees and flowery DMs as cited by pp are just conventional in a different way.

Is blue hair more attention seeking than pink hair? Asking for a friend 😁

I'm so out of touch with what is conventional I don't even know (or care) if I am or not.

The technoscientific progress than has elevated living conditions are also what is causing the environmental degradation that will make earth incompatible with life as we know it. The idea we can outrun the problems we've created with better and newer technology is for the birds. In my opinion. People who like blue hair are far more optimistic.

The entire technological and scientific machine which has given us the gains are also the thing that will ultimately take them away again. You need to zoom out a bit and stop seeing things so closely, what does the world look like 100 years from now?

I am not someone who is a follower of fashion, the only 'fashion' I care about is a song by David Bowie.

If that makes me unconventional, good.

For me it isn't about technology, it's about attitudes and tolerance. And on that score, we are doing much, much better. Work still to be done, especially on tackling misogyny and religious intolerance, but lots of progress made in much of the world. I quite like living in a world where it isn't legal for my husband to rape me or beat me - don't you? I enjoy living in a world where it isn't legal for me to be sacked because I'm pregnant. I like having the right to vote, own property, get a divorce. I like living in a world where my gay children are alloiwed to get married.

The demographic and environmental challenges of this world are indeed extremely difficult. Things may yet go wrong. However, I would ask you: at which point do you think we should have stopped progress and been content with where we were, warts and all?

I get questioned about it a lot!! Although admittedly less now I am older. But some people still want me to explain “why”.

I have fortunately out grown any desire to be conventional.

I dress and colour my hair ( not blue) to please myself and if other people like how I look then that's great. If they don't then that is their problem not mine.

Luckily I am now self employed and in the creative arts so I really can please myself.

I think its a grave mistake to congratulate ourselves for improvements in "attitudes and tolerance" because they are not moral victories they are merely cultural developments which arrived hand in hand with the technology that facilitates them. The sexual revolution and emancipation of women was made possible with the pill, safe abortions, anti biotics for stds and prophylactics. Without these technologies womens lives would be just the same. We have all the changes, but the birth rate has collapsed, which condemns our children and their handful of children to lives full of challenges we couldn't imagine in a nightmare. The future is bleak for humanity.

The cost to the environment of the industrial revolution is, hopefully just "things may yet go wrong" but I think you know, that they are going badly wrong already and we have passed the point of no return

Unconventional might be more interesting thinking about different ways of living rather than appearance. Almost everyone looks conventional.
Does anyone have an unconventional life in terms of where they choose to live or who with or how they spend their time? The convention being one partner, a home, work, retirement with some hobbies/socialising thrown in

You're the second person to say that and we established that the common denominator was actually in fact ketamine, rather than me 😂

No. As a teen, I realised that trying to conform and be normal didn't make me happy, and I wasn't very good at being conventional anyway, so I gave it up as a bad job. In any case, I was automatically classed as "the weird one", so I wasn't going to fit in, anyway.

Peer pressure plays a big part in enforcing rules about how to be conventional, whether you're at school, you're at work, or even where you live. If you fit the idea of being normal, you're more likely to fit in and have friends, and be comfortable where you are. Also, fashion varies between different areas. If you live where I do, you're more than likely to wear sensible, practical farm clothes, and drive a pick-up or a Land Rover. If we travel into the nearest city, we stick out like sore thumbs, because people are more than likely wearing what you can buy on the high street, and their cars are of all different makes and sizes!

In my job, I have come up against people who do not like women working in a traditionally male-dominated industry. However... if I can do the same work as a man, what's down my trousers doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I look like, as I'm going to look filthy after about five minutes, so as long as I'm dressed appropriately, it's fine. Also, the animals that I work with are not particularly fussy with what I look like, and they're more interested in what I am doing, or if I have food on my person.

In terms of people, I don't care what you look like. If you're a genuinely good, kind person in my book, then that's fine with me.

I'm married but DH and I are quite unconventional in how we spend our downtime, we spend at last 50% of it doing our own thing most weeks. We are happy together and enjoy each other's company, but we are also introverts with not much overlap of interests (or personalities, if I'm completely honest 😄). A lot of people seem to assume we don't like each other, or are struggling in the marriage, because of this, but that's not the case.

I also don't think it's necessary to live with the person you are married to - theoretically I could easily have seen DH and I maintaining separate homes (finances permitting) and spending time together as and when we chose.

Really interesting thread, thanks OP!

The MN forums have always seemed to me like a community that places a high value on conformity. People are always asking, "Is this normal?" The implication being that if it's not, it had better be fixed asap, because weird=bad.

The word "normal" does a lot of heavy lifting. On medical threads, it means "healthy". On lifestyle threads, it means "common" (in the sense of "usual", not the class sense). On relationship threads, it often means "morally okay" or "reasonable".

There's a sort of mental shortcut posters take, which goes: most people do X - I do X - therefore X is good - everyone should do X!

Completely agree, and part of the reason I started this thread is that I'm always noticing how much censure there is on MN around concepts such as 'weird' and 'normal'. Some seem to regard 'weird', in particular, as the most beyond-the-pale thing anyone could possibly be, despite the fact that 'weird' is largely a subjective concept.

I love this, weed out the judgemental, and potential bullies!
Although I'm curious to know how you knew they were avoiding you because of your hair before - did they literally tell you that they didn't speak to you before because of your hair, or was it just funny looks from them and whispered comments, or something?

Ooh that was an epic side step question dodge
Worthy of any politician lol

Your view of the future is incredibly bleak.

And while the demographic crisis may indeed cause serious problems, in the longer term this world is extremely overpopulated and a reset, however painful, is needed. Control of fertility was always going to be essential; the alternatives (keeping women in reproductive slavery) are so very much worse.

You seem to be happy for women to be enslaved for the sole purpose of having children - I wonder why that is?

I'm also not convinced humanity is worth saving in the long term. It's incredibly arrogant to presume that humanity is the sum of nature's ambitions. We may be just a little step along the way, destined for extinction just like the dinosaurs. Who's to say another emergent sentient species wouldn't do better than we have done?

I probably give the impression of appearing conventional and i'm married and took my husbands name though didn't intend to ,he was fine about it but a family member had strong ideas about this and i gave in ,don't care one way or another now.
In my head i don't really conform much at all, i treat people as i wish to be treated and i have strict ideas about good manners as i absolutely hate bad manners but i have very little respect for authority and ridiculous rules, iv'e always felt like this but the last few years have proven how utterly despicable our authorities and law makers are ,so sod them i'll absolutely do my own thing.
If i can find a way round something which benefits me and my family i will if I need too, i am eloquent and can talk people round easily into seeing my point of view.
I have never followed a crowd and as a pp said i too feel quietly confident in my own decisions.
My family were never in competition with any one and my dad had a very similar mindset .
I don't care at all what anyone wears but i do think the 'blue' hair dungarees 'types' are actually a kind of 'conventional' ironically but who cares it doesn't matter.
My lack of conventions give me a sense of freedom but i do care a lot about how human beings treat each other and i wish there were more tolerance in general .

How is falling birthrates bad? Or somehow worse than women stuck with parents they do not want and kids they cannot care for? Falling birth rates are not the fault of the pill. It’s a global phenomenon which you are oversimplyfing. One could argue it’s better for the next generation to not have ever growing populations and children born to parents who cannot care for them.