Issue 208

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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.

The speaker claims that the appearance and behavior of people could indicate a society’s ideas and values. I concede the way people look, dress or act reveals their interests to some extent, and we might even judge people's careers through their appearance. However, the values of a society are concepts planted deeply in people’s minds and cannot be observed from people’s appearance.

In many societies, people of high rank reserve priorities of clothing and decoration for themselves as symbols of their social status. In ancient times, only Roman senators could wear garments dyed with Tyrian purple; only high-rank Hawaiian chiefs could wear feather cloaks or carved whale teeth. Under the Travancore kingdom of Kerala (India), lower caste women had to pay a tax for the right to cover their upper bogy. In China before the establishment of the republic, only the emperor could wear yellow. In many cases throughout history, there have been elaborate systems of sumptuary laws regulating who could wear what.

Additionally, for some people, their clothing indicates a general preference or interests. Commonly, the clothing of people who belong to a same group have many common characteristics. For instance, most college professors dress plain clothes and wear glasses; the pop music stars dress gorgeously. It seldom appears when professors’ appearance are similar to pop music star, which would be unimaginable.  Perhaps their jobs determine what kinds of clothes they need to wear, or perhaps people in the same career have similar characteristics. Otherwise this phenomenon could not be explained.

However, a person’s character and thought cannot be observed completely from his appearance. First, it is quite possible that some people prefer an austere life to an extravagant one. A magnate with great wealth might appear very common—dressed similarly with people around him. Second, sometimes it is wise for some politicians to dress plainly, especially when they visit those people in poverty or in starve. Moreover, there are some people who cannot show their characters through their appearance because of the limitation of objective conditions. Take the people working in famous corporations as examples, they are required to wear uniforms so that their appearance can tell others nothing about their characters.

Admittedly, a society’s values are largely shared by its members. These values identity those objects, conditions and characteristics that members of the society consider important; that is, valuable. In the United States, for example, values might include material comfort, wealth, competition, individualism, religiosity and democracy. The values of a society can often be identified by noting which people receive honor or respect. In the US, professional athletes are more highly honored than college professors, in part because the society values physical activity and competiveness more than mental activity and education. The values tell members of a society how people should be and how society should be. Obviously, a society’s values lie in people’s heart and cannot be shown by their appearance.

In sum, appearance actually indicate people’s preference to some extent, however, it is unrealistic to judge a society’s values from what people wear. Therefore, if we want to study a society's values, we should communicate with the people and learn their thoughts.