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TOPIC: ISSUE208 - "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."
WORDS: 631 TIME: 0:43:00 DATE: 2007-2-27
Whether the way people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and interests? As far as I concerned, there is no denyint the fact that through people's apperance, the way the look, dress, and behaviors, the way they act, we can tell people's characters, including their attitudes and interests. Since the society is constituted by it people, the society's ideas and values can be discerned a lot by observing the appearance and behavior of its people. However, to get a in-depth understanding of a society, other factors such as the history and political climate etc. should also be taken into account.
To begin with, in most occasions, people's apperance can leak much informatoin of their attitudes and interests. To illustrate this point, many empirical examples are implete with our daily lives. A girl, who make up everyday and dress up neatly and fashionably, has a optimistic attitude to life, for she wants to please everybody she met and herself. Similarily, a person who has a cold look to others, probably has a hatred to society and his/her life.True, people's attitudes and interests play a significant role in their apperance.
Besides, people's behaviors, which are always impulsed by people's inner motivation, can reveal their attitudes and interests. It is human's instinct to act at their will, and the will, stems from human's attitude to life and to society, as well as human's interests. For instance, a well-educated person tends to have a grateful and content attitude to his/her life and the society, therefore, he/she will be ready to help others in almost every situation. In a not dissimilar way, a boy will talk about football games with his friends and play football evey weekend, because he has a intensive interest on football. Consequently, by watching people's behaviors, we could more often than not judge their attitudes and interests.
Therefore, to some extent, since the society's ideas and values are deprived from the attitudes and interests of the majority of its members, we can tell much about the society's ideas and values from observing its peoples' behavior and appearance. As an old saying goes, the ocean is formed by a myriad of water drops. The ideas and values of a society are formed by attitudes and interests of its people at large. For instance, citizens in America would prefer wear various kinds of clothes at their convenience, which reflects the value of freedom and individuals in the country. While women in Arab countries cover a mask from head to toe, and this circumstance reveals the idea that women are possessed by men and they have a lower status.
However, while we can learn much about a society from its people's appearance and behavior, we should not lose sight of the fact that sometimes appearance and behavior are so deceiving that they can't speak for what the real ideas and values in people's heart. The example of the change of a person's appearance from University to work outside can aptly illustrate this point. When one was a student at a freely university, he would be affected by the contagious trends caused by vigious young students. And thus most time, he chose sports clothes. When he attened a company and become a formal worker, he should obey the rule of company that men should wear suits at the work time. Therefore, his sports clothes were locked into darkness and suits rein preme of his bureau. We can see from this appearance exchange that people's apperance may not reflect their real attitudes and interests but could be confined by the environment.
In summary, I fundamentally agree that we can tell much about a society's ideas and values by observing the appearance and behavior of its people. However, this way is not the only method to research a society since sometimes it would cheat observers. To better know the ideas and values of a society, we should also study the society's history and cultural which will be quite helpful. |
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