I’ve often pointed out that if our clothing has an effect on other people, that’s their problem, not ours. I suppose it’s time to science this matter: how can our clothes affect other people?
There are a few brave souls out there who’ve experimented with changing their look and documenting reactions for our edification: for example, trying out goth, vintage and natural looks; or varying levels of makeup on a dating website. While these articles are often quite entertaining and insightful, they suffer from the problem “N=1”; they’re just one-off stories and it’s probably a bad idea to generalise from them, no matter how much we might want to agree with them. The same goes for the ‘common-sense’ ideas about the messages other people pick up in our clothes. As a general rule of thumb, common sense ain’t so common (or sensible, for that matter).
There are a couple of findings I kinda liked:
1) Winners wear red
In a study of Olympic combat events (Hill & Barton, 2005), 55% of bouts won by competitors in red. Okay, but maybe those competitors just happened to be better fighters? Another study of Taekwondo bouts (Hagemann et al, 2008) used clips of matches in which the competitors wore blue or red. These clips were shown to 42 referees who would award points. Sneakily, the same clips were shown again, but with the colours digitally swapped over. It turned out that on average, fighters in red were awarded 13% more points than those in blue.
So, it looks like there’s some evidence that the colour of our clothes can affect how other people react to us. Just bear in mind that these studies were in a purely sporting context, and there’s nothing to suggest whether these are innate or biological reactions, or based on cultural cues. And there’s more to winning than simply wearing red (just ask Charlie Sheen).
2) Sexiness is distracting for about half of us
A study on decision-making and bargaining (Wilson & Daly, 2004) presented (presumably heterosexual) male and female participants with pictures of attractive or plain people of the opposite sex and asked them to rate their attractiveness. Then they would take part in a exercise in which they’d have to divide up sums of money and judge whether to take a small, immediate reward or a larger reward later.
They found that, generally speaking, women weren’t really affected by the pictures of attractive men and didn’t make poorer choices. However, pictures of attractive women made men perform worse (compared with neutral pictures). The effect is more pronounced in men with higher testosterone levels.
Conclusion?
Even if the way we look affects other people (and remember, these can be very subtle effects in very specific situations), I don’t think this is any reason to dictate what we can wear. I don’t think any of this has any impact on the principle that if someone else is distracted or made uncomfortable by what they see, that’s their problem not ours…
Of course, in Star Trek, the guy in red shirt never fared too well in each episode 🙂
Now and then, I like to employ a little irony when picking photos for blog entries… 😉
Great post, Miss Twist! Indeed the one person you should be pleasing when picking out what clothes to wear is yourself. If you feel good in whatever you’re wearing, that’s good. If it affects how others think… then, yeah, it’s so their problem. As for red vs. blue (no political talk here), I guess those findings shouldn’t be so surprising; red has always been an eye-catching color, and one that promotes some qualities of aggressiveness, martial arts or otherwise.
Thank you! 🙂
It’s also worth remembering red and blue have different political meanings depending on where in the world you are. Maybe the association of red with energy is a cultural meme linking it to blood and sunrises? (And from there to action, aggression, nationhood and revolution?) I guess all we can do is speculate!
Interesting read. Thanks for a wonderful post.
Best
Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
Geez, Miss Twist, that was really fun to read 🙂 and OMG, you’re totally gorgeous, I hate you 😛 (of course not, i’m just being silly) 🙂
Love you and love your posts 🙂
Thanks, Nour! 😀
I reckon beauty comes with confidence and feeling free-spirited; if you have those it doesn’t matter what you look like! 🙂
What a great blog ,,I try in a very feeble way to put my thoughts down in a blog..
Love your posts and all the photos..
Miss Dusty stiletto.
Thank you Dusty! 😀
The more blogs out there the better – that way there’s less chance of someone sitting at home thinking “Am I the only one who wants to do this?”
Everyone has their own stories to tell, and their own ways of telling them. 🙂
So glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Twist, the more people like you who blog openly the more this subject can be discussed. That can only be a good thing because look at how far we have come already in the field of diversity. I love that people can accept we are all unique more now than at any other time in history. How bright is our world now that we have Gay Pride all over the Western World? I’m not advocating that we should rub our opponents faces in the dirt and stamp all over them in some act of revenge. We should be open, honest and show the world that everyone has something to offer no matter what their gender or sexual preference may be. We are all different and it is those differences which make life worth living. Peace and love to us all, and by the way I think you look amazing.
Thank you! 😀
And I agree – I’m looking forward to the day when we can all just enjoy each other’s differences and accept that people are the way they are!
Soon may that day arrive, xo