Judging by the cover

Judging someone by what they look like isn’t the right thing to do, in fact it is completely shunned against, but that does not necessarily mean that people actually follow that rule. On the contrary, it is a completely natural reaction for people to look at a passerby and quickly make assumptions about that person’s personality or profession and will immediately have something to say whether good or bad.

The eyes can reveal so much about a person and in great depth may I add. Just by looking at the way someone interacts with people, you can receive indications about that person’s personality.  

People, (and me personally) tend to critic what we see, and that is usually the way that person dresses or how he or she carries him/herself. It is incredible the amount of information you can get just by the wardrobe that that person has on. Whether it may be a uniform or a certain motif that connects him or her to an organization or an in-group if you will, you can get a sense of that person’s role and identify their position within the society.

When observing people you can naturally tell that persons age (in some cases that is), ethnicity, race and sometimes even their nationality. These elements all fall into the category of an ascribed status which simply means that they are social statuses that we are given at birth and are rigidly assigned to us without our personal choosing. Another example of that is our family background; we do not choose our families but are born into them.

In contrast, an achieved status is a social position which we as individuals have the freedom to pick and choose a role or position that ultimately best defines us and reflects our personality to others. Examples on these statuses are job occupations such as a doctor, fire fighter, teacher, student, worker, business man and many others.

These uniforms are status symbols. They identify what you are in the society. A high ranking officer is known from the amount of the merits he has accumulated and that are displayed on his uniform. A student is identified by his school uniform in the aforementioned school colors and so on.  Uniforms are a big part of our daily lives and they provide a sense of order to our life. We get dressed in certain “uniforms” depending on the roles we play and the places we go. A business man would dress in a smart suit and tie to his morning job and would probably slip into something more comfortable if and when the scene changes.  

Usually when it comes to sport teams, such as basketball and football, the members of the in-group are dressed in the same uniform and work together as one. Other examples of in-groups are the military or the army where there are groups of officials dressed in the same uniform and are working together to make the team function correctly and efficiently.

Status symbols can be very important in times of crises, because we can usually spot out the person we want really quickly. In the case of a robbery we can spot a police man a mile away from the car he drives and by the uniform he wears.