ASA 141
Week 5
Hjoleifur R. Jonnson's and Nora A. Taylor's article, "National Colors: Ethnic Minorities in Vietnamese Public Imagery" talks about how clothing can mark people's identities and differences. While in the western culture, we often think of clothing as a way to express individuality, uniforms are still used to make distinctions. In Vietnam, clothes can also be used to separate different age groups, genders, and social statuses. While, I have never really reflected too much on this before this article, I find that this makes a lot of sense. Even in the United States, people are easily judged by what they are wearing. There are social experiments on how people are treated differently and assumed to be of different social statuses based on what they wear. For example, a man wearing a hoodie and sagging jeans would be treated differently than a man in a suit. Even my sorority asks us to dress in professional wear every other Monday in order to remind us the importance of looking professional in a world where women of color are often not taken seriously in the work place. People are assumed to have certain political beliefs based on the way that they are dressed as well. I do think that in this day and age, it has become more acceptable to dress in whatever clothing you would like, especially in regards to breaking gender stereotypes. However, clothing still makes a big first impression. Since clothing is often used as a tool for individual expression, should we or should we not be able to use someone's clothing to judge their character?
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