Is Physical Appearance Completely Irrelavant?

Good dog . . . go play now, Good Dog ! ! !

Blatham
Blatham, I never sensed in any way that you thought me obese, even though I'm an disabled old lady and 45 pounds over my ideal weight. Perhaps at my age (74) it doesn't count. Besides when I'm tootling down the sidewalk in my electric scooter with a red flag on a pole, I look like a raring, tearing grandma and you better get out of my way!

BumbleBeeBoogie

your humour sold him.

Re: Hah!


Why don't they understand that sometimes you just want to be on the floor by yourself, without the tongue and teeth and paws? It's not like I'm the gf, who wants sex every time she gets in bed...

Oh, wait. Huh. I never thought about it that way...

85 tubes of mascara? that woman does not have a makeup bag - she has a makeup house. that whole thing was frightening.



now i'm picturing BBB on the floor with her dog and the keyboard.



and patiodog and cavfancier and blatham breeding dust bunnies. can we get setanta away from here, before he gets any ideas.

Our bed has not been swept underneath since we moved into the house over a year ago. And we've got two dogs, one of whom has the cattle dog habit of blowing is coat but also has the thick, dense fur of a german shepherd. so if anybody needs some extra dog hair, let me know and i'll send some your way when we move out.

s'ok. i've got 2 double-coated dogs. (setanta is 'wearing' the portrait of one these days). They blow coat as well. Luckily (?), hamburger had them shaved while they were at sleep-away camp with him and mrs. hamburger. The vacuuming I did a couple of weeks ago has really held up!

Hmmmm - maybe this whole shaving cats thing has more going for it than I thought!

here, pussy pussy....

Bunny, you are so right ...

omg, rwerrr eek exclaim Stradees felines all gathered around computer monitor ~ x 7

ehbeth
Beth, to stay on topic and speaking of how appearance effects us, I took my 6 month old Bichon Fries, Madison, to a groomer to get a Bichon cut. When I picked him up 4 hours later, he had a Bichon head and tail trim, and a shaved poodle body. Now he looks like a little white rat with a head that's too big. But at least I can see his big black eyes now. When I brought Maddy home, his friend Cooper, the Spaniel across the street, didn't recognize his looks or his new foo-foo scent, and they had to get reaquainted before engaging in their usual romping on the front lawn. I won't take him back to that groomer again. Cooper won't allow it.

BumbleBeeBoogie

I'm just back.. I've been away for a day. I'm reading. This all looks very interesting.

I will say, before going on, having read halfway down page 22, that I feel some may have misinterpreted the meaning I intended from some of my comments.

Patio said I may enjoy "playing the game" (and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that conjecture, except it's not the way I think about it). Actually, I dress in a very unconventional way and I have many different looks. There are lots of reasons why I like to play with clothes and hair styles. I love beautiful glass works, paintings and other forms of art as well as shoes, dresses and jewelry. In my profession I'm far from the standard conventional dresser. It happens I'm not in the business world. I work for myself and I can dress as I please, within reasonable limits, that is. For instance I can't wear seductive clothing to work, but I do wear more sleeveless dresses or tops in summer, no stockings, sometimes shorter skirts and higher heels than most of my colleagues. So that my frazzled hair do (which I love because it's so easy and suits the way I feel about myself), very long or short skirts, unconventional jewelry, etc. make me stand out not as someone who is "playing the game" but rather as a unique individual who enjoys expressing herself with her style.

My profession allows more leeway for personal expression and encourages individuality, so I don't have the same pressure others have to adopt a certain look. However I do not extensively conform to the usual dress of most psychotherapist/psychoanalytsts.

But I also don't think of dressing within reasonable limits or in a way that may command more respect from customers or colleagues to be "playing a game." I think of it more in terms of communication. To some extent we all have a need to size people up from their appearance, at least on first sight. Whether it's a need or not, it is a natural phenomenon, in any case, and ultimately unavoidable. So if you're in Rome, to some extent you do as the Romans do. And one must know the limits before one can decide within what range the limits can be expanded.

I could never have made it in an office because I simply don't want to be that regimented. And I believe this is one decisive factor in my decision to avoid this line of work. I would hate to have to wear a suit to work.
Yuck! (Although I have a couple.) But if I had to, I'd find a way to individualize the suit as much as I could and not cause confusion for those I'm trying to influence.

I think we do have a consensus of opinion here on one very important point. That is we all seem to believe that no one should be required to work or dress in anyway other than the way in which we each feel comfortable or that pleases us. I don't believe a person who enjoys decorating themselves should be judged more harshly than one who does not. Appearances only go so far in telling us something about the other person. And it's up to each of us to determine what we think of another person, ultimately on how well they preform their work, how they relate, how trustworthy they are.

I think we need tolerance for others. And recognizing that we all have our individual unconscious fantasies and predetermined ideas about what we see and what it means, I think we need to develop a curiosity about ourselves and others rather than a set standard, especially a standard that's set in blind judgemental prejudice, whether that prejudice is conservative or more relaxed.

Sozobe says she doesn't like to spend much time dressing herself. And she's certainly beautiful enough and young enough to not have to do it if she prefers not to. But even if a person just prefers to look however they look because they don't find attending to appearance to be fun, that is their right and I don't judge them for it. But if I say I enjoy having and wearing clothes and if I do it in a reasonably tasteful, not overly done way (which I believe I do) then I don't believe this should be judged in any other way than in a curiosity for why.

(just so's you know, lola, I don't mean games in a pejorative sense -- just the monkey/people of of adorning the corporal self, and as such is a game that can be played for fun or for keeps. a lot of people play it very seriously, and expect that you do the same or they won't play any other games with you, either. I in no way meant to intimate that you were like this.)

What, no assless chaps at work?

I mentioned a while back there (4th page) that this discussion is a really difficult one because there are both abstract concepts and specific people being discussed. I prefer to work with abstract concepts, but the people part keeps coming up.

Lola, I sense that you feel judged for your appearance. I think that the initial flap was almost the opposite -- that OTHERS (not you) were being judged, negatively, for THEIR appearance. There was a good deal of attention given to you for your appearance, while others did not get that attention.

The overriding point is one that, as you said, we all agree on -- everyone has the freedom to comport themselves as they see fit. The more subtle point is that some people are impatient with the fact that, in terms of appearance-as-communication, a body which is not slim, a face which is not made-up, hair which is unstyled, can in some situations communicate "I am not sexual", when that is far from the truth.

Only on Fridays, cj. It's not right, I tell you.

Sozobe
Sozobe, your perception re Lola's post appears to be right on target.

BTW, is that a Rosie The Riveter scarf on your avatar's head. Anything significant about that in your life? Just wondering and wanting to know more about YOU.

---BumbleBeeBoogie

I gotta ask, what is the logical conclusion of this?



I appreciate the compliment very much, (though I'm now much older than in those pictures), but if I were not beautiful enough or young enough... I'd have to do it, even if I prefered not to? I am almost certain that is not what you actually meant, but hopefully that highlights what I was getting at in my above post. Who does have to? Why do they have to? Who decides that they have to? How are they affected if they don't?

truth
Patiodog, I understood you correctly: "Play" as in All the world's a stage..." The sociologist Irving Goffman developed an explanatory model of society (the sociology of everyday life) called "dramaturgy." From this perspective, we are all always "performing" for ourselves and for others, particularly our moral audiences.

Dlowan, I certainly hope you didn't hurt yourself.

JL - it's funny you say that -- that's kind of how I tend to look at people, as kind of a mixture of anthropology and theater. The gf has done some dramaturgical work, and not coincidentally is (I think) an excellent observer of people's character and motivations. I feel I should go read some Schechner now...