I got an e-mail today from Dr. J, sending out the collage of the Bali pictures. It made me miss that experience and everyone from it (except Dave). So, I decided to wear my Bali clothes to school today. It's been unusually warm, so I figured I'd be fine. So I put on the whole outfit: sarong, kebiyah, bracelet. No sash though, couldn't find it.
Off I go to class. The first thing I noticed when I got there was people watching me as I walked to class. Then I started noticing _their_ clothes. It's wierd how you tend to not notice what people are wearing unless it's unusual in some way. Like, in Guam, there was at least some diversity in the clothing styles because of the Chuukese girls wearing their skirts all the time. On the college campus here, everyone dresses the same, even the people who are obviously trying to stand out, all do it similarly.
Like a uniform of acceptability, there is a standard fashon, and certain patterns of acceptable deviance from that pattern. If you deviate too far in one direction you stand out too much from the norm and people start to make comments. Comments can be either bad or good, I got lots of comments today from people saying that they liked my skirt (sarong). Normally these are people who wouldn't say anything about how I'm dressed, or were people whom I don't even know.
Later, it started to get chilly, so I put on a sweatshirt. If I had thought I was gatting strange looks before, when my clothes were consistently outside the norms, it was nothing compared to the looks that I got when I combined an article of clothing outside the norms with an "acceptable" piece of clothing. It was like I was breaking the "rules" with the blending of cultural items, whereas before I was totally outside those "rules".
Just some observations on my day. Perhaps some insight into the inner workings of how and what I think about on a daily basis . Whatever. My sore throat isn't any better today. While it did help me cut back on smoking for most of the day, I completely fell apart while I was hanging out with Cory, and smoked like, half a pack. And I was doing so well.
Off I go to class. The first thing I noticed when I got there was people watching me as I walked to class. Then I started noticing _their_ clothes. It's wierd how you tend to not notice what people are wearing unless it's unusual in some way. Like, in Guam, there was at least some diversity in the clothing styles because of the Chuukese girls wearing their skirts all the time. On the college campus here, everyone dresses the same, even the people who are obviously trying to stand out, all do it similarly.
Like a uniform of acceptability, there is a standard fashon, and certain patterns of acceptable deviance from that pattern. If you deviate too far in one direction you stand out too much from the norm and people start to make comments. Comments can be either bad or good, I got lots of comments today from people saying that they liked my skirt (sarong). Normally these are people who wouldn't say anything about how I'm dressed, or were people whom I don't even know.
Later, it started to get chilly, so I put on a sweatshirt. If I had thought I was gatting strange looks before, when my clothes were consistently outside the norms, it was nothing compared to the looks that I got when I combined an article of clothing outside the norms with an "acceptable" piece of clothing. It was like I was breaking the "rules" with the blending of cultural items, whereas before I was totally outside those "rules".
Just some observations on my day. Perhaps some insight into the inner workings of how and what I think about on a daily basis . Whatever. My sore throat isn't any better today. While it did help me cut back on smoking for most of the day, I completely fell apart while I was hanging out with Cory, and smoked like, half a pack. And I was doing so well.
posted by Kami | 12:41 AM
1 Comments:
you know what... i kind of miss seing people that take no pride in how they look, kind of similar to myself, but i do appreciate the diversity of this island, and the styles here... and if you ever need a good laugh, just take a moment to remember how those crazy tourists dress...
Melissa
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