LP, it took me years to cultivate that kind of alienation from my home town culture, lol. I mean, growing up I was always a bit of an outsider and a freak, but it still stunned me the first time a student at a directional u (as in “SW State”) pfiffed at me and muttered something about big city elites. Could that have been addressed sartorially? Perhaps partially.
I commented to Krishna recently that she could evaluate the appropriateness of a dress for teaching by thinking of the persona who would wear it, then trying to picture that person teaching. Maybe I should’ve followed my own advice and worn things that would fit in (I didn’t like jeans even in middle school) and then let the persona the outfits called up take control. I can see how a style moniker could guide that process.
But do people think constantly about the persona they want to project? I can definitely understand wanting to do that at work and in certain other roles (anything I am at as a parent, or representing an organization). But for me, that isn’t most of life.
Most of the time I just am, and the only character trait I want to be sure to present is “not absolutely stark raving mad/still has a trace of sanity in there”. That’s a pretty low bar, especially for someone who looks like she’s from the German-settled Midwest (my parents are), as long as most places privilege that. I know that many of my black friends have a much stronger sense of needing to be presentable when they go out, and my son is developing that too, now that he is, in his words, “a large black man”. But that’s a discussion for another day, style for survival.
