I wrote yesterday (early this morning?) about how your friends and who you choose to surround yourself with helps define who you are. I was speaking about about Obama then, but now I am speaking as a more general idea. If you think about high school, you had the goths, the jocks, the nerds, the skaters, a bunch of groups that looked alike, sounded alike, and even thought alike.
Even though they may have been that way on the outside, if you think, and I mean really think about it, maybe there was one of them that on one or more occasion acted in a way that was unlike the rest of their specific clique. Now if you are in high school then you probably think that it is the worst part of your life. If you are out of high school then you probably think that too. Life after high school, commonly called “the real world” isn’t high school, but it sure can feel like one. The difference between high school and the real world is that you have more control over which clique you are in and what people you want to surround yourself with.
You can choose to surround yourself with drinking buddies, who do nothing but get drunk everyday, but if you are seen with them then you will get pushed into the general idea of what they are. If you are seen with wealthy high class businessmen then you too will be seen as that. If you choose carefully who you are seen with then you can appear to be anything you want. It doesn’t matter how you act because when your seen with a group you appear to be part of the whole. There is a way around that stereotype though, and that is clothes.
Think about it, in high school the goths always dressed the same, the jocks all wore the same jackets, that is no coincidence. Let’s assume that you are out drinking with the guys. Now say they all wear jeans and t-shirts, if you go in even a slight change, like khakis and a shirt then you would stand out from them and even though you are part of the group you would stand out. Even if you don’t act like the people you are with, visual appearance is still how you are mostly perceived, especially from a distance. In essence, it really is the clothes that make the man, just be careful who you are associating yourself with.
