Gryffin's post , what are you trying to communicate through your style, http://youlookfab.com/welookfa.....your-style got me thinking of how I look at other women and interpret what they are trying to communicate. ( Her post is my all-time favorite YLF post. T )
The truth is that I am not sure. I am ashamed to admit that the only two areas where I know I do it are when women dress very scantily and tight or when they wear Juniors' clothing : trying to pick up a man and not doing well aging, respectively. I hate doing it and I am working on reprogramming my brain to NOT do it. : )
Otherwise, I tend to look at an outfit and think, " Oh, I love that. " Or ( again embarrassed ) , " Wow, she must have a boatload of money." I apologize if I am offending anyone, I want to be really honest here.
Yet I see the importance of self-expression through clothes and I see how incredibly powerful it is in all the posts responding in Gryffin's thread. This is a very, important , deep need for women.
I read a book years ago called :
Open and Clothed : For the Passionate Clothes Lover by Andrea Siegel
This thread is almost like an open discussion of this book. It is a heavy book. It is dense and it seems as if every, single sentence is just so weighted with deep guttural "intrusions" into who we really are - through our clothes. It feels like a 12 month stunt in sartorial phsyco therapy. : ) I LOVE it. It is the War and Peace of of clothes and style lovers.
Furthermore, this brought me back about 20 years when I stopped in a Coach store in a very high end mall. There was a marketing woman there taking surveys. I did one because I curious as to what they were doing - quality of bags ? New designs ? Store layout ? NO. The questions were things like :
When you see a woman with a coach bag, which education level do you think she has ? a) none B) high school C ) college d) graduate school
When you see a woman with a coach bag, what do you think her household income is ? ( choices....)
It struck me that companies were using our "narratives" against us. By creating their own narratives based on our emotional needs and our desire to be part of a "sorority", so to speak ( because woman are more social then men ). Then magazines and ads starting providing us "stories" and "lifestyle" ads or catalogs. In fact, LL Bean did one recently about extreme sports people ( Mt. Everest climbers, mountain climbers ) who use their stuff and how we can own those things too to lead an exciting lifestyle like no one else. Well, little do they know that I only climb Mt. Everest once a year and I did that already this year, so I don't need anything for the rest of 2014. : )
So, it gets me wondering, do people really look at me and get some sort of narrative ? Do they care ? Or is our narrative's expression solely important to us ? What do you think ?
Anyway, thanks to those who have hung in there with this LONG post ! LOL
I would LOVE to hear ALL and any of YOUR thoughts !!!!!!
