FELT like a criminal the other day as I put on my khaki pants. I had scoured my dresser for other pants, any other pants, but laundry day had come and gone unheeded and I absolutely had nothing else to wear. I cringed at the thought that someone I knew would see me in my khakis and think that I had bought into the unofficial U.Va. dress code. That's when I looked at the clock and realized all the ruminating I was doing about my clothes had made me late. As I high-tailed it to class, I realized something: Fashion stereotyping has got to stop.
You know what I'm talking about: Wear a baseball hat and you're a frat boy. Put on some baggy jeans and you automatically worship Eminem. Wear khaki pants and you're wearing the "U.Va. uniform" and have no mind of your own.
Stereotyping people on the basis of what they wear obviously doesn't even come near the negative effects felt by victims of other forms of stereotyping and prejudice. However, it is a pain in the butt when you just want to slap something on in the morning so that you can get to class. You don't really want to think about the implications your outfit may have or what people might peg you as if they see you wearing something in particular.
Seventh grade is over, folks. The whole "let's judge people by their outward appearance" thing just isn't cool anymore. It also doesn't cut it. It never did. People are not what they wear, or where they shop, or how much they spend on clothing. At least, they aren't to everyone who has graduated from junior high and abandoned ideas like that along with their retainers and social studies books.
Of course, there are plenty of people who buy things like Abercrombie & Fitch clothing just because they want to look like everyone else. But there are plenty of other reasons why people may buy it: They could simply like the style of the clothing. Another reason might be that they don't care too much about what they wear. Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle simply are convenient to buy for those who are lazy shoppers. The popularity of those brands makes them readily available. Not everyone has time or energy to scour thrift shops for vintage duds.
Or perhaps khaki is a person's favorite color. Who knows. There is only one thing for certain: you will never know a person's particular reason for wearing certain clothes, much less anything else about them, if you immediately dismiss them because you think they wear "lemming" clothing.
Even if some people do buy certain clothes so that they can look like everyone else, who cares? It doesn't make them bad people. Wanting to fit in is not a cardinal sin. It isn't necessarily a sign of shallowness or some other character defect.
It also isn't something people can judge others for, because everyone does it at some point. Everyone, at some point in their lives, feels insecure about themselves and deals with it by conforming.
Being adventuresome and outlandish takes guts. Some people don't want the extra attention they would get if they wore something different, and it's as simple as that.
I myself am a convert from the "let's judge everyone by what they wear" school of thought. Before coming to the University last fall I bemoaned the fact that it looked like a J.Crew outlet store had exploded over Grounds.
I was nervous about meeting my roommate, since I had learned through our e-mail correspondence that she - egads! - wore Abercrombie & Fitch clothing. At that point I'd probably have felt better about meeting her if she'd said something else, like she was a pyromaniac or that she ate babies for breakfast with her Cheerios, for example. I worried that she'd by ditzy, or shallow, or both. Yes, I made all these pre-judgments simply from finding out what she liked to wear. Isn't stereotyping great?
Luckily, I got over it. In the way that college freshman often are, I was in for a hefty life lesson. My roommate and other people I met who wore the offending "preppy" clothing were unique, interesting people with very distinctively different personalities. They didn't have a tendency to jump off cliffs just because their friends were doing it or baa like sheep in the middle of sentences.
It would be great if everyone realized that judging people based on what they wear is juvenile behavior, not to mention really hypocritical. If you think that people are superficial for looking like everyone else, you should realize something: By judging people on such superficial levels, you become superficial yourself. If people realize that "khaki" doesn't necessarily mean "sheep," maybe we could do something more important with all the time we spend thinking about what to wear - like sleeping.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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