<p>Ok, romani, but please explain to me why I am not allowed to have the opinion that wearing sloppy sweats in public is inappropriate. That is still not clear to me. Is it because you and others on this thread think it is okay? Is it because students already do it? Am I required to conform my opinions to yours and others, or am I allowed to have my own opinion?</p>
<p>I have not claimed that anyone need agree with my opinion, I merely expressed it.</p>
<p>Btw, romani, absweet, and most others on this thread, I would be thrilled to have you at my D’s wedding. Be warned that the invitation might express an appropriate attire, and it would make me happy if you made the effort to comply. :)</p>
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<p>It’s actually nearly the opposite. </p>
<p>I just post here because folks with the attitudes like Bay’s are so alien to my everyday experiences except the time I worked for a NYC biglaw firm with an overly anal formal dress code even for staff members. </p>
<p>I find it so ROTFLOL funny some people could feel entitled to be catered to in venues when they have no greater standing than those whom they feel offended by…like a public street or most college campuses.</p>
<p>cobrat,
What I expect from others is nothing more than the respect I believe they are due.</p>
<p>Bay, no one is denying you your opinion. I just think it’s silly to be offended by what a stranger and a grocery store wears.</p>
<p>Cobrat: I don’t think anyone has indicated an expectation that she ought to be catered to! If that’s what you’re reading, you’re constituting beyond the given. Some people, like Bay, are offended by certain clothing in certain settings. Maybe most people don’t care. That doesn’t mean the people who care are wrong, petty or entitled. If you ask me, jumping to that conclusion is much more offensive than someone’s frank and straightforward expression of a viewpoint that some find unpopular.</p>
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<p>Okay, and I just think its inappropriate to wear sloppy sweats and pajamas in public.</p>
<p>romani - I don’t think some of us are saying that we would be offended or care that much about what someone is wearing, but it wouldn’t stop me from having an opinion about someone based on how they are dressed.</p>
<p>I just had a young woman in my office. We started talking about going to ballet, opera and broadway shows in NYC. SHE was the one who said that it is a shame now that people would wear jeans and t shirt to those events. I couldn’t agree with her more.</p>
<p>But Bay, “in public” covers a whole ton of ground, doesn’t it? A person in “sloppy sweats” could be on the way to, or from, the gym. How would you know to be offended or not in that case? Or maybe they really just intended to go through the drive-through coffee stand but realized they were out of feminine products or needed gas, or medicine for the kid…and got stuck in their sweats. Maybe, like a woman who volunteers at my church, she has a dying son, isn’t too well herself, and just tossed on the nearest clothes, which include a “cat lady” sweatshirt and threadbare stretch pants. </p>
<p>The point is, we DON’T KNOW why any of these people are wearing sweats, or even poorly fitted clothing, and it seems trivial in the grand scheme of things to be offended to the point of having hurt feelings by any of it.</p>
<p>The lovely elderly lady I referred to in the other paragraph never misses sending me a personal birthday card and asks every time I see her how my daughter, who she’s met only a few times, is doing. She’s one of the few people here who never fails to compliment me on the work I do because she once had a similar job and found that she only heard the complaints, not the compliments. So she remembers to thank me. I am offended on her behalf that people like you would have hurt feelings for having to look at her sloppy sweats and cat lady shirt without having a clue as to why.</p>
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Gyms have locker rooms so people could change and take a shower. It takes extra time, but it shows whether you give a hoot. When I am in a hotel and I am going to a spa in the hotel, I wear my street clothes in the elevator and change when I get to the spa, some people don’t. Do I form an opinion (or judge)? Yes, I do.</p>
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<p>About a year and half ago, one colleague was recounting how she “cringingly” felt out of place and stuck out like a sore thumb because she dressed up to the nines to attend Green Day’s American Idiot show on Broadway. </p>
<p>She did admit no one really cared, but she wondered what a spectacle she must have presented as a dressed up woman complete with pearl necklace and earrings attending a show where nearly everyone else were sporting DIY punk outfits, spiky brightly colored hairdos, facial piercings, ripped jeans, or otherwise ripped sloppy outfits that would send most of the fashionista/well-dressed set into orbit. </p>
<p>Had a hard time stifling a chuckle…even while saying that by dressing against the grain in that venue…she probably demonstrated more of a punk attitude than the vast majority of the audience. As you may have surmised, she wasn’t thrilled.</p>
<p>sseasmom,
You are doing it now too. Overblowing simple opinions that people have expressed and turning them into towering infernos of outrageous personal offense that some elderly woman might have to wear a sweatshirt to the doctor!!! No one said anything remotely close to this.</p>
<p>My opinion is that people ought to consider the feelings of others when selecting appropriate attire for the day, and that generally (please note the word “generally”), it is inappropriate to wear sloppy sweats (and pajamas) in public as daily wear.</p>
<p>I specifically stated that sometimes stuff happens and we get stuck in inappropriate clothing, and MOST EVERYONE KNOWS THIS. That is why using peoples’ attire as a measure of their character is simply one “data point” as oldfort said.</p>
<p>I also said that most of us follow the adage, “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” So we DO know, that even some people who wear pajamas to a wedding might actually be the next Mother Theresa. We know that. But we still think that wearing pajamas to a wedding, like sloppy sweats to class everyday, is not appropriate.</p>
<p>@Bay: wearing sloppy sweats to class every day is entirely acceptable on some campuses. Even some of the faculty may dress that way.</p>
<p>I also feel compelled to point out (because I do not care about clothing but I care passionately about grammar) that you should have written “every day” rather than “everyday” in the last sentence of your latest post.</p>
<p>You are not obligated to use impeccable grammar to avoid hurting my feelings, though, just as the people around you are not obligated to dress impeccably to avoid hurting yours.</p>
<p>I’d also like to add, that the concept of “cultural norms” and “appropriate attire for weddings,” did not arise in a vacuum. Those expectations arose because of peoples’ <em>feelings</em> about what is appropriate in certain situations.</p>
<p>Actually, Marian, I am aware of the improper “everyday” usage, because you told us way back at the beginning of this thread. I wanted to see how this annoying conscious decision to non-conform to proper grammar would make you feel. Sorry.</p>
<p>Also, Marian, I stated very early in this thread that I am quite aware that most people do not care about my feelings.</p>
<p>OF, I was specifically addressing the person or people who are offended.</p>
<p>Now Marian is doing it too, implying that I said everyone must dress “impeccably.” I said nothing of the sort.</p>
<p>I’m out of here.</p>
<p>I need to get back to work anyway, even though I’m wearing white pants (after Labor Day!) that have a stain on them (horrors!) because the tomato in my sandwich dripped a bit during lunch.</p>
<p>What, you don’t have some old sweats or pajamas you can change into?</p>
<p>"They also signify character traits which don’t reflect well on the one holding the opinion/judgment…such as being small-minded, judgmental, and acting stereotypically like petty tyrants/bullies many folks hoped they left behind once they’ve left/graduated from ye olde mainstream US high school. "</p>
<p>It seems that anyone in authority who has a point of view different from yours, you call a petty tyrant. And you are so influenced by What Other PeoplevThink that you ascribe bully traits to them. Bullying does occur, but you never actually describe it, you just imply and impute it.</p>
<p>"
I also feel I have better things to do with my mindspace than caring what anyone wears in venues where there isn’t a dress code for the sake of mere fashionista sensibilities/good appearance sake. More importantly, it’s highly presumptuous it’s the job of other folks in such venues to cater to your fashion/appearance sensibilities."</p>
<p>Huh. Is that true for the students of Oberlin who (according to you) do care what other students wear, to the point that they will regard you as having Sold Out to The Man if you don’t wear an appropriately grungy uniform, and would (according to you) exert social pressure and/or “ridicule” the student who dressed preppy? </p>
<p>Because it seems rather hypocritical that you think it’s fine for Oberlin kids to hold stereotypes about and put social pressure on others to dress a certain way, but that’s all of a sudden oppressive if done by the preppy brigade.</p>
<p>“To me, that’s behavior fits more with a petty tyrant type monarchs and aristocratic-types used to enforce on the lower orders and a factor in why most are relieved such social systems have mostly been consigned to the dustbin of history and heartily mocked.”</p>
<p>Mocking is a big deal for you, isn’t it? Like absweetmarie said, there’s so much mocking and ridicule that you seem to encounter. Personally I don’t believe it.</p>
<p>And your notion that people who like to dress nicely are one step removed from wanting the US back under Britain is odd. You’ve got a real problem with anything that smacks of upper middle class norms, don’t you?</p>