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电梯直达

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发表于 2008-2-20 12:22:28 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

Issue 208"The way people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and interests. You can tell much about a society's ideas and values by observing the appearance and behavior of its people."

I fundamentally agree with the speaker’s statement, that the way people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and interests, as well as their society’s ideals and values. However, I could not embrace it without reservation.
To begin with, in most cases the appearances and behaviors are accurate indications of people’s attitudes and interests. For example, imagine that you are dragged for a long time by a promoter who have introduced his/her products, in which you do really have little interests, to you off the reel. The expression on your face--frowned forehead, twisted eyebrows, and reluctant looks--tells your attitude that you do not like to buy it. Another apt illustration involves my best friend Jane who loves sports deeply. She always dresses up herself in sport wears, and there is few students in our institution who do not know thus “sport girl”.
Moreover, in certain respect the appearances and behaviors of people do reveal the ideas and values of the societies they lived in. Societies like Japan in which people dress formally and look grim hints that they place more emphasis on hard work and less on personal pleasure. Societies like Saudi Arab where people dress uniformly conservative and traditional might indicate the whole society’s preference of religious practice over individualism and expressionism. Societies like US where a lot of people can be seen obese reflect the people’s indulgence on pleasure and enjoyment while placing low values on physical health. At the same time, the US people’s casual, colorful and diverse style of dressing reveals the society’s openness, democracy and its nurturance for different ideas, beliefs and attitudes.
However, with the development of notions of freedom and democracy, people in nowadays put more and more emphasis on individualities. From dresses they wear to behaviors they act, and even to thoughts in mind, everyone is in pursuit of a unique particularity. Eventually, it is becoming even more difficult to tell a society’s ideas and values just from its people’s appearances and behaviors. In addition, there are a number of natural, social or political factors that will made people’s appearances and behaviors belie their attitudes and values. An paradigmatic example is students. The students are required to dress up in dull and ugly uniforms from elementary school to high middle school in China for the purpose of equality, evidently the uniforms do not represent their attitudes and interests. Another appropriate instance is people living in the China during the Culture Revolution. In that time, people dressed up either in Zhongshan clothes like their leader Mao, or in military clothes. Clearly these did not represent their attitudes or interests, many people just wanted to avoid political attacks. Also, some environmental elements such as climate and work condition also restrict the appearance of people. For example, office clerks wear shirts and pants while construction workers wear helmets and boots. In harsh climate people tend to wrap up themselves, while in hot and humid climate people always wear few clothes. All these have little if anything to do with their attitudes or interests.
In sum, in some respect the appearances and behaviors could be the accurate indication of interests and values, however, in certain respects they always belie the truth. Therefore, I could not agree with the speaker’s statement totally.