There’s a whole range of social behaviors where not participating means, all else equal, that you have a little less standing. You don’t have to tell jokes, but you have to find some way of connecting with other people.
Clothing is similar. You don’t have to dress any better than this (which is what I meant by “you don’t have to do it”):
This style of dress will avoid silent judgment in most contexts, but it also will require you to find other ways to connect with people than your clothes. It’s neutral “as clothes,” but not sufficient as a form of “connective glue to other people.” And most people do have to find a way to connect with other people.
People who do dress with creative fashion, in my view, are using clothes as connective glue. Those people can probably afford to be less funny, because people will like them for their clothes. People have a menu of options to go beyond “bare minimum neutrality” to “supplying positive value” in their social behaviors, and it’s not bullshit to insist that they find some way to do so in order to associate closely with them.
The point of this post, to me, is that it’s really easy to go from “not even neutral” with clothing to “neutral,” and still pretty easy to go from “neutral” to “nice.” Probably easier than going from “mildly offputting sense of humor” to “humorless,” or from “humorless” to “makes people laugh sometimes.”
But maybe others have a different definition of “nice clothes.” To me, the guy in the photograph is an example of what I mean by “nice clothes.”
There’s a whole range of social behaviors where not participating means, all else equal, that you have a little less standing. You don’t have to tell jokes, but you have to find some way of connecting with other people.
Clothing is similar. You don’t have to dress any better than this (which is what I meant by “you don’t have to do it”):
This style of dress will avoid silent judgment in most contexts, but it also will require you to find other ways to connect with people than your clothes. It’s neutral “as clothes,” but not sufficient as a form of “connective glue to other people.” And most people do have to find a way to connect with other people.
People who do dress with creative fashion, in my view, are using clothes as connective glue. Those people can probably afford to be less funny, because people will like them for their clothes. People have a menu of options to go beyond “bare minimum neutrality” to “supplying positive value” in their social behaviors, and it’s not bullshit to insist that they find some way to do so in order to associate closely with them.
The point of this post, to me, is that it’s really easy to go from “not even neutral” with clothing to “neutral,” and still pretty easy to go from “neutral” to “nice.” Probably easier than going from “mildly offputting sense of humor” to “humorless,” or from “humorless” to “makes people laugh sometimes.”
But maybe others have a different definition of “nice clothes.” To me, the guy in the photograph is an example of what I mean by “nice clothes.”