Light-hearted conversations and hearty laughter trill throughout the room as males and females compliment each other on all things lavish. No doubt itis a posh, high-end lifestyle I am asking you to imagine here.[break]
Finally, you have arrived at this venue we have created. You roll out from your Mercedes W211 and laxly toss the key to the valet. The valet takes your keys from you but looks at you rather skeptically as he appears to be wondering about something.
‘How strange the people in this town are,’ you think but, of course, you pay no attention to this and walk into the room.
When you make that grand entrance, people inside also undoubtedly give you a look. You attract attention instantly. However, there seems to be something scornful in the attention you are getting.
You figure it is because you are new in town, that you are having a hard time adjusting and are reading too much into things.
As night draws to an end, you bid farewell and head out to your beauty of a car.
You tell the valet the number of your car. Again, the same contemptuous vibe meets you from these valets. And things get pretty mixed up when the valet refuses to bring you your car because he thinks you do not own the car.
‘Wait, what just happened?’ you think. These people seem to have acted in strange manners that they did because they thought, all along, that your looks were incongruent with what you were driving, for according to them, jeans and t-shirt is not what a Benz owner would typically “suit up” in.
Okay, let us get back to reality now. I am sure you are thinking that this is too farfetched of a scene; except, it is not. Believe it or not, one of my professors actually had to go through this humiliation just because his daily wear – fancy or casual – comprises jeans and t-shirts.
And even if you were to replace things like Dom Perignon with, say, Khukuri Rum, and Mercedes W211 with Bajaj Pulsar180 to make it more identifiable, I would say it is a pretty relatable experience.
I can easily recall such an experience that happened with me. It was during the rainy months around two years ago when I needed to go to Yak and Yeti to inquire about something. I was wearing flops, an old ragged shirt and jeans.
Moreover, the pouring rain did no favor by drenching me wet. I went to the door and the guard actually stopped me and asked me what my purpose of visit was.
When I told him I wanted to find out something, he told me to call the reception to find out because they could not allow me to go in at the moment. I can only tell you the different degrees of anger I felt within me and you can bet I gave him a thorough piece of my mind.
All these words just to get to my main point: Looks, apparently, matter. Despite the whole “I like someone with a bright personality” claptrap, it cannot be more obvious that someone without a proper dress sense has no chance even in hell of allowing his/her personality to “shine through.”
And if so be the case, then I say personality be damned (for the time being at least) and vanity be embraced. No wonder models make it big solely on the basis of their limited vocabulary of “woohoo!” and “awesome!” and closet-size amount of an average person’s vocabulary.
But models or not, Benz owners or not, what little firsthand experience and numerous other stories to validate my experience have taught me is that looking good has become more than just about fashion today. Looking good has somehow become a part of feeling good too.
It is pretty amazing what materialism can do to you, is it not? Sometimes I think I can actually be as effective solely because what I wear gives me the confidence to be who I am.
Sure, I have come a long way from my ragged shirt and jeans-wearing days in terms of fashion, but somehow that experience of being looked down upon is something that is going to stick for a long, long time. It is going to stick with me because that experience is what taught me, perhaps, that vanity is very fair.
Ayushma Basnyat is a student of political science at Thammasat University who enjoys exploring life and all that it has to offer
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