The importance of our appearance

I was at Pier Imports one day when I overheard this old lady complaining about the snotty sales people not servicing her due to her appearance. Upon looking at her, I think I understood why...

The reality is that your appearance is another form of self-expression. In fact, it's the one that you are always showing to the world. When you walk into a store wearing rags with disheveled hair and questionable hygiene, are you really telling the establishment that you are ready to do business with them?

The answer is no. What we wear and how we physically portray ourselves has always been a means of expressing who we are. It's really not a conspiracy headed by consumerism. Although equating happiness with the amount of stuff you have is, but that is not the focus of this post. So when I hear of some lamenting over the world's obsession with appearance as an absolute awful thing, I really am tempted to say- be careful, is it the importance of appearance in our social interactions that you oppose or the focus on having "stuff" related to appearance that you oppose?

I think they refer to the latter. All this to say, heeding your appearance is not a shameful, superficial, callous activity or a waste of time. It's heeding what we say to the world as soon as we step out of the privacy of our homes. At the same time, I am not condoning any ill/disrespectful treatment of the little old lady that really needed a shower nor the extremely unrealistic criteria of beauty imposed by our lovely media.

I am simply saying, just because I am not a Tree Hugging, makeup banning Amazon woman does not make me a superficial, Britney Spear wannabe tramp. I kid :) Though I do quite like Britney...