Thesis Regarding the

Variables in Our Clothing

Choices
Stacie Weatbrook

Gerrit Gerritsen
8/1/2014




G e r r i t s e n | 1

Synthesis Regarding the Variables in Our Clothing Choices
While walking through City Creek, you can see countless cultural norms buzzing busily around.
One of the most obvious norms is how people dress. Whether its the outfit a hipster at the
coffee bar is wearing or the manikins in the Anthropology windows, you can see the obvious
cultural trends. Whilst taking a walk around City Creek, I myself began to notice these norms
and began to wonder what causes people to wear what they do. Is it a result of available
cloths? Or maybe it has to do with the religious affiliations of the given person? Or could it have
to do with whats popular in our culture?
The more I thought about our fashion culture, the more I began to realize that we need to take
responsibility for what we wear. These thoughts popped back into my head when we read the
following two essays: Books Make You a Boring Person and Food for Thought: Resisting the
Moralization of Food. The essay Books Make You a Boring Person written by Cristana
Nehring, and published in 2004 by The New York Times, discusses how society has begun to
religiously glorify the ownership of books. Nehring argues that people only seem to care about
books because they are being replaced by T.V (Nehring 1). and the internet. This glorification
causes books owners to see themselves as people of a higher intellect (1). When in actuality
they are merely using the books as a crutch, and are lacking in actual intellectual abilities (1).
The other article I read concerning the moralization of certain items was Food for Thought:
Resisting the Moralization of Food. This article was written by Mary Maxfield and published in
the book They Say I Say. In this article, Maxfield discusses how certain foods have been deemed
bad by our society (They Say I Say 442). She believes that this is a result of people eating purely
G e r r i t s e n | 2

to be healthy and forgetting that the entire purpose of eating food is to provide energy for the
body (443). Maxfield believes that this is the sole cause of the moralization of foods.
I tend to agree with both of these arguments, and am willing to apply them to how we choose
what clothes to wear. Some may just wear whatever is clean, but for the bulk of us our clothing
choices are actually very complex. I believe that we choose what to wear based on what the
Gods of fashion tell us is cool. Whether its short-shorts, cut-off tees, acid washed jeans,
stripped skirts, or even unwashed grungy lumber jack shirts, someone somewhere is deciding
that this is what should be cool, and this is what everyone should wear. I, being the rebel that I
am, say no to the styles that fashion designers believe are hype. We as a nation shouldnt have
to really on an elite set of designers to decide what we need to wear. We need to step up and
take responsibility for our clothing choices. Our fashion culture is a result of the choices we as a
people make, that being said why dont we as a nation decide a new fashion trend that is
neither demining to women nor based solely on how swollen a man is. I submit that we shouyld
influence what clothing companies offer, and that we cannot settle into the state of fashion
zombiesm just to be in with the crowd.
One of the main influences on our clothing choices is the culture. However, many may be
wondering what influences our culture. I feel that the sociology and psychology behind the idea
that is culture is best explained by Ashish Agarwal in her essay Characteristics of Culture, which
was submitted as her final paper for her college level sociology class. In her article she outlines
the characteristics of culture. The most important, in my opinion, characteristic of culture is
that it must be learned. This means that culture isnt stagnate, but is actually changing as each
G e r r i t s e n | 3

person learns about it (Agarwal). This means that the fashion trends that you see are actually a
morphed version of the original cultural trend. This is obvious in the widely accepted fashion
style known as hipster. The clothing choices this culture entails include a mixture of nice dress
and ruggedness. However, hipsters have complex subcategories including but not limited to:
grunge, pop hipsterism, fakers, and O.C. hipsters. These complex categories of a seemingly
simple style are a great example of how culture changes as each person learns about it. These
ties back into my main point since what we see each other wearing is a changed version of what
stores are selling. Ergo, as we still can influence our fashion culture even though the clothing
producers dont change what they sell.
Another great example of how others effect our culture can be found in the book They Say I Say
and is entitled What You Eat is Your Business. This essay calls out our nation for causing
obesity to be a public concern, when it should actually be the responsibility of the consumer to
watch what they eat (They Say I Say 397). I draw a connection between this essay and my thesis
because what we wear should really be our responsibility. If we want to wear pink shirts, neon
green pants, and sandals with socks no one should sit on the side lines and try to change it. In
the TV Series such as What Not to Wear, in which they take a person which they see as having
little to no sense of fashion and change what they wear. This brings the clothing choices of
individuals into the public eye, and causes those who do dress as the subjects too feel as
though they are dressing incorrectly. This is a major cause of our nations fashion culture since
the actual designer big-shots are tearing down those who dress in different ways.
G e r r i t s e n | 4

The final essay I found regarding the influences of our fashion culture was actually posted on
the website Teen Ink by an unknown author entitled Clothing Choices and Stereotypes. This
article discusses the how people give up the standards that they were raised in just to fit in
(Stereotypes). A great example of this is when a person who was raised in a family that strongly
emphasized being modest decides that they should wear short-shorts since everyone else does.
This ties back into my original argument because there are many people who have given up
what they once knew just to wear what everyone else does. I believe that we can counter this
by teaching our kids not only standards, but the importance of them and how they affect their
lives.
Ultimately, we as a nation need to decide upon our own culture, and not that of a fashion
designer. I say that the easiest way to do this is to stop moralizing certain clothes as ugly or out
of style, and to leave each person to their own clothing choices. Our clothing choices should not
be a result of a glorified designer or a fancy magazine, but of our own comforts and standards. I
believe that the only way to achieve this goal is to change our very fashion culture. However,
this can only be accomplished if we are willing to put forth the needed effort to search out our
own styles. In the end, I would like to challenge you to go out and break the fashion META, and
create your own style regardless of what other people think.

G e r r i t s e n | 5

Works Cited
Agarwal, Ashish. "Characteristics of Culture." n.d.
Nehring, Cristina. "Books Make You a Boring Person." The New York Times (2004). News Paper.
Stereotypes, Chlothing Choices and. "TeenInk.com." n.d. TeenInk.com. Web. August 2014.
"They Say I Say." Ed. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. II. New York City: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2012. 442-447; 395-399. August 2014.