simont | It's not me

It's not me

When I was younger, my usual clothing choice tended to be black jeans, and a black T-shirt with something on it. I had a big collection of black T-shirts containing a variety of stuff I'd found amusing or pretty or inspirational at the time: things containing references to fiction I liked, things that were just aesthetically pleasing, things that were funny, you name it. I even dabbled once or twice in designing T-shirts myself to add to the collection.

A few years back I decided that in some unspecified sense those T-shirts were not really me any more, and bought a whole set of plain black ones that I've been wearing ever since. My collection of T-shirts with stuff on them is still sitting in my wardrobe, but hasn't been touched for years.

When I send email or post to Usenet, I put a signature file at the bottom of which I also have a largish collection, mostly containing quotations or comments that are at least vaguely humorous in intent. One gets randomly selected to go on the bottom of any given email. Now I'm starting to feel that that, like the T-shirts, is ‘not me’ any more, and that it reflects the taste of my five- or ten-years-ago self rather than that of my current self, and I increasingly find myself contemplating ditching the lot of them or at least narrowing down to one standard one.

I'm not quite sure what my essential objection is to these collections, but it feels as if it's the same one in both cases.

It could be that it's the random selection. Every so often my software picks a sig quote for a given email that's specifically inappropriate in some way for that particular context, or even if not specifically inappropriate it sometimes just carries the wrong tone (e.g. too jokey for a serious email regardless of specific subject matter); if I notice that, I force the generator to re-roll, but probably I don't always notice. And likewise, not quite as often, with the T-shirts: there was always the chance that on a given day I'd happen to be wearing a T-shirt that had some unfortunate relevance to something I was going to be doing (e.g. there are some moments when it's tactless to wear a T-shirt with Neil Gaiman's Death on the front). So vetting my sig generator's output is an extra chore added to the process of sending any email, and perhaps I'm just getting bored with having to do that.

Alternatively, it could be that the phrase I've been using above – ‘it's not me’ – is pretty close to the answer in itself. Any given T-shirt or sig quote doesn't say very much about me, but the whole lot taken together gives a broader picture of what sorts of things I like or find amusing. And that picture is of somebody I used to be, not of me as I am now; so perhaps the point is not that I want not to blazon slogans and pictures across myself at all, but that I just don't want to blazon that collection across myself and haven't the energy to start a new collection from scratch.

On the third hand, I don't feel any desire to go out and start a new collection of decorated T-shirts or sig quotes, so perhaps that's not my essential objection and I've just become a person less inclined to broadcast information about my tastes in art and wit; not that I haven't still got tastes (and at least some of them haven't changed), just that I'm more inclined to feel that they're a thing to be talked about among friends rather than shouted to the world at large by my torso.

A related possibility is that I might have subconsciously begun to succumb to the annoying notion of ‘looking professional’ which for some reason says that professional people aren't supposed to have visible personalities at all. I rather hope not – that's a concept that has always irritated me – but it can't be denied that I feel particularly uncomfortable at the idea of wearing a silly T-shirt to come into work in particular, and I don't use my collection of sig quotes in my work email either.

What do other people think about this stuff? Anyone else reading this have strong opinions for or against wearing clothes that say things about you other than (unavoidably) your taste in clothes specifically? At work as opposed to at home? Does anyone else think it's sensible to draw a parallel with a collection of sig quotes, or is that just me?

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This sounds very familiar. I have a collection of T-shirts, too, that I barely wear anymore, and I did throw a load out a few years ago. I'm much more likely to wear something which only portrays my personality indirectly, rather than slogans or references to music or fiction.

I think not feeling the need to shout about one's personality or tastes is sometimes part of "growing up". For me it was also to do with being a bit more interested in clothes and being happy to choose my wardrobe based on colour and style, rather than picking a T-shirt as a default (which is what I did before). I can't imagine that's true for you.

I have designed my own shirts before, for myself and friends. I have an idea right now, but I'm not sure if it will happen.

I think not feeling the need to shout about one's personality or tastes is sometimes part of "growing up"

Perhaps, although I think (if I can remember my younger self correctly) that I would not have seen it in terms of 'feeling the need to shout' at the time. (In fact I was generally suspicious of any sentence fragment including the phrase 'feel the need', since it seemed to me that it was most often used as a means of pre-emptively framing a debate in a way that made it hard to argue in favour of what might in fact be a perfectly sensible thing to want to do.)

I don't think I ever thought in terms of wanting to tell the world what sort of person I was. I wore things I thought were funny or cool because I enjoyed seeing the same sorts of thing on other people – I'd laugh at the jokes on other people's T-shirts, or admire the artwork – and so it seemed natural to give back in the same way, to wear things that would make other people smile or laugh. The point wasn't, at least consciously, to identify me as "someone who likes that set of things"; it was to inspire pleasure in other people who liked the same things as I did.

Which suggests that maybe what's put me off the practice now is precisely the fact that I've started to care more about the fact that by wearing decorated T-shirts I (whether I was particularly trying to or not) communicate a profile of my personality and tastes to people who may not share them. In other words, I care more about how I'm perceived by people in general, rather than just wearing things for the pleasure of people like me and not worrying about what anyone else might think.

But then ... I still admire the artwork, and laugh at the jokes, on other people's T-shirts, and now I'm not giving back any more – I'm a freeloader in the funny-T-shirt economy. And I'm still communicating something about myself by eschewing those T-shirts, in that I communicate that I'm the kind of person who wears a totally boring black outfit every day and doesn't seem to mind that very much. So I'm not sure I actually won there, even though my subconscious feels more comfortable this way!

Edited 2010-08-16 12:41 (UTC)

Or, maybe you say funny things that make people happy, and believe in your ability to reliably do this such that you don't need subtitles just in case it doesn't work one day in speech.

Ohhh - maybe it's because you don't go to the Calling and other such loud events anymore, so that you can go up to a friend and say something random and funny and they don't say "what? I didn't catch that, can you speak up?" so often - like literally not needing subtitles anymore?

Nice theory about the Calling :-) Now you mention it, I wonder if I would be more willing to wear some of my old decorated T-shirts if I were to go back there – on the grounds that if I wasn't gothing up properly like I could never be bothered to do anyway, it would at least constitute making more of an effort clothes-wise than turning up in black jeans and T-shirt...

It hadn't occurred to me to think of funny T-shirts as subtitles for my spoken wit :-) (Though, if so, they'd have to be subtitles of the sort that give up on a totally untranslatable pun and try to retain the spirit of the line by writing a completely different pun in the target language...)

I know what you mean, sort of. Recently I chucked out all my stripy socks (which you no doubt remember well) because they don't feel like "me" any more. Although oddly now I actually feel *more* inclined to wear slogans and pictures on my chest, rather than less.

I think once you get more comfortable with yourself you feel less need to ostentatiously nail your colours to a given mast; and it's also eternally true that People Are Thick and Appearances Count For Far Too Much. So professionalism, which is a set of relationships founded entirely on people you've barely met, is going to have a strong element of visual conformity as an indicator of the individual's willingness to subscribe to the notional "professional" norm.

On the other hand if you start wearing long-sleeved polo shirts because they're "smarter" I will hang you upside down from Marks and Spencers :)

I shifted from mostly wearing tshirts to mostly wearing tailored shirts and blouses (if mostly unironed ones) a couple of years ago. Partly because they look nicer/fit my current shape better, and partly because they do seem to get me taken more seriously at work than the geeky tshirts. Or maybe the external change happened at the same time as me getting/projecting more confidence, and confidence is helped by feeling I look good, so it could be a bit circular, but anyway it's working for me.

Of course, I don't actually like ironing any more than I used to, so about half my shirts sit unworn for weeks on end as they really don't look good unironed. I'm vaguely trying to find someone to pay to iron them for me once a week or fortnight, but no success so far.

Oh damn, why do I live in Sheffield? I like ironing.

Ha - yes, recently I've discovered a love of crisp button-down shirts, along with an unholy lack of arsed for ironing them... blast my middle-class dress sense :)

Hmm, I can relate to this. I swing between wearing clothes that are very eccentric and expressive, and clothes that give away as little about me as possible, and I'm currently in the latter phase as well. And yes, I think it's very much the same as sig quotes.

I think it's partly an age thing; when you're young, powerless, and insecure it's incredibly important to have things that say HELLOOOO, I EXIST!! and as you get older that becomes less necessary. But I also think we become more conformist with age, and I'm not sure why. I now find myself worrying that 'people will stare at me', whereas a decade or so ago, if people weren't staring I was doing it wrong! I suspect real sanity lies somewhere between the two...

when you're young, powerless, and insecure it's incredibly important to have things that say HELLOOOO, I EXIST!!

Perhaps, although I've just written a long reply to another comment saying that I don't recall ever consciously wearing noticeable things for that reason. Could have been entirely subconscious, I suppose, though.

Same here. I've become more understanding about other people's reactions to t-shirts (and .sigs) as I've aged, and I now take more care about what I wear.

I also pick up less t-shirts nowadays, but I still have a fair number, and do find ones I like intermittently. Just less often than I used to. I think the number of things I bump into that seem funny in a novel way gets less the more experience I have.

I think, particularly when you're younger, that .sigs and slogan t-shirts are used as online and real-world subcultural signifiers - a shorthand way of saying, "I'm geek/goth/arty/indie". As such, they function as a way of identifying others of your 'tribe' in chance encounters. Once you're a bit older, well, you've pretty much found your tribe/friends group/family of choice and you don't need to be quite so blatant anymore!

Perhaps, although as I've just said more verbosely further up, I don't recall ever having deliberately used them for that purpose. I would certainly agree that they served that purpose regardless of whether I did it deliberately, but it seems less likely that not needing that purpose any more would cause me to stop if that wasn't why I was doing it anyway. Er, if that makes sense.

I've definately drifted away from being the sort of person who wears slogan-y T-shirts on a regular basis. Can't quite bear to chuck them out yet.

Not really sure why.

Aw, I like your random email signatures, I think some of them are really funny. Not that this should be a reason to moderate your choice of whether to use them or not.

Maybe work seems like a less appropriate place to use them because people at work are more likely to have had a recent death in the family or something else that would make your shirt look accidentally really rude without knowing it until you were told and were committed to wearing that shirt for the rest of the day?

My brother wore to my grandfather's funeral: black jeans, black trenchcoat, black T-shirt that said "Today I will be wearing mainly black". It sounds a bit dodgy but actually everybody said it was AWESOME.

Hm. I always felt an odd person out by being the sort of person who'd like T-shirt wit, but never actually doing so. I always liked the idea of a random sig, though never implemented it though funnily enough, now you say it, I feel less attracted to it.

I think I'm partly reluctant to pigeonhole myself by using a witty slogan which doesn't define all of me :) and possibly (though I'm not sure) now more confident that I'll come across in a good way by how I act, and don't especially need to make an effort to have specific slogan.

(On the other hand, my reluctance for T-shirts might have been purely practical: I was never enthusiastic enough to overlook the unfortunate fact that any slogan I liked enough to put on a T-shirt I'd be bored with a week later, and that I'd forget I was wearing it and say "what" a lot when people made references to it.)

any slogan I liked enough to put on a T-shirt I'd be bored with a week later

This is true, and one of the reasons why I've occasionally wished there was a means of changing the design on the same T-shirt regularly. (Yes, if verbal slogans are your thing you can get velcro setups, but that's not the same at all: a velcro T-shirt encourages people to play with your chest, which is one for parties rather than everyday life.) Ideally some sort of passive display technology, though of course also fully washable :-)

I'd forget I was wearing it and say "what" a lot when people made references to it

Ha, yes. I don't remember if I ever did that with T-shirts, but I've definitely done it from time to time in other similar circumstances.

This is true,

And how much I like a quote isn't necessarily related to how soon I get bored of it. The quote I've liked for by far the longest amount of time has been "What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?", but I'm worried that it might be exponential decay, and if I cave and assume I'll go on liking it, I'll be wrong and then finally get bored of it :)

I've definitely done it from time to time in other similar circumstances.

I imagine my conversations like:

Q. Did you have a horrible accident?
A. Well, uh, sort of, but what specific aspect of my appearence are you critiquing today? :)

I've definitely moved to thinking about wearing t-shirts with slogans in recent years. Partly because I'm part of a culture where that's acceptable; partly because I've now got the confidence to deal with the extra attention.

I do also do the 'corporate dressing' thing though - I'll tend to dress more smartly if I'm seeing people from outside our department.

I think I know what you mean: at one point, around the age of 21 or so, most of my t-shirts were from some NGO or other (Survival, Amnesty, Oxfam)or had other slogans on. I wore a lot of band t-shirts as a teenager too. At some point I grew out of having writing on my clothes (having never taken to the idea of wearing conspicuous labels or brand names, not seeing the point in paying extra to do someone else's marketing). Then I just...didn't any more.

I have a few shirts with writing on but they all come from specific events that I like remembering. For example, at the Mod (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_National_Mod) they were giving out t-shirts saying 'Tha mi ciallach' (I am sensible) to promote 'sensible drinking' and I like it because if the t-shirt is being sensible then I can be as facetious as I want and plus, it reminds me of the Mod. Similarly, both of my parents sent me t-shirts from local events that they had stewarded at (fireworks and a highland games, specifically) because they wanted me to feel included in local stuff and that was nice.

I think it's a process of growing up that has something to do with what Coco Chanel said about the little black dress: every woman should have one because you don't want people to notice your clothes when you walk into a room, you want them to notice _you_. Clothes should flatter you and make you look good, but ultimately fade into the background so that your character comes through.

No badges? She's got badges. This one's Charlton Athletic.

S.

Perhaps is comes under the heading of "professionalism" but I suspect that people become more sensitive to the "risks" they are taking as they get older. The risk of the "funny slogan" turning out to be "inappropriate" seems more pronounced in the light of all those times that it turned out to be unexpectedly embarrassing in the past. Being more conservative is a way of controlling this. You only show people the bits that you want them to see in any particular situation. This can be rationalised by trying to distance yourself from that "embarrassing" person.

T-shirts aren't generally considered "eccentric" but, at least here, wearing a whole load of little badges (for example) might be.
Objectively, is there any difference?

I've never been a huge one for printed T-Shirts - the odd club/society/reward-for-cool-event T-Shirt when I was younger, but even that has worn off.

Self-expression through clothing, for me, seems not to be something I want to do all the time. Most of the time, nondescript clothes that don't give too much away are fine. I've got some really nice short-sleeve shirts that I like to wear during the hot bits of summer, but apart from that, my routine day-to-day wardrobe is plain and unexciting. On the other hand, it is nice to pull the stops out once in a while and wear something impressive.

Professionalism, I think, is somewhat related to the observation I made a while back about metonyms like "the Bench" - something to do with being an interchangable part.

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