Who are you dressing up for anyway?

This weekend I was talking to a friend of mine about relationships. She told me that when it comes to fashion, women primarily dress up to impress each other, not men. The first thing to hit my mind was, “huh”?

According to her philosophy, getting “cute” for a guy isn’t that hard because men aren’t picky. But women want to be noticed for their fashion sense, and it’s other women that will notice. Of course, this probably doesn’t apply to ALL women, but it’s a new notion for me. I proceeded to explain to her that if men didn’t have to impress women, then they’d be wearing clothes until the fabrics ran thin and there was no other option. Can’t compare apples to oranges, right?

So then what about with costumes? I look back on the costumes I’ve dressed up in, and they’ve always been to get a laugh or comment from someone else. I figured, “well, Halloween is all about dressing up to get attention, right?” For the most part, this is true. BUT, not everyone dresses up only on Halloween. Then I had the question in my mind as to whether people make their costumes to impress others or just for themselves.

With a pen and paper in hand, I did a small survey of people in my local area. According to the 100 people, I found that 66% of them claimed they dress up just to impress themselves. They don’t seem to care what others think. They just like to do something that they thought would be cool, and if people like it, that’s fine. Hmm, interesting..

My resources were limited, but I did hit some forums on the Internet to ask people why they like to dress up.  I had similar results. So then what about everyone reading this blog? Who do you do it for?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 9:19 am and is filed under questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.