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Proverb: The clothes make the man
ZZ Top said it best with the line ‘every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man’ in their song titled Sharp Dressed Man.
In Japan, it’s definitely true.
I’ve found that here, more so than in Canada, people tend to judge you immediately by your clothes.
The clothes make the man means society tends to judge people by the way they are dressed.
When I first came to Japan twenty years ago, one thing I could not understand was the young women on the subway in Osaka.
They were dressed to the nines holding Gucci and Prada handbags – but they were on the subway.
With my practical Canadian thinking of twenty years ago, I would have purchased a car long before I purchased expensive clothing.
Another incongruity I always thought was huge is seeing a BMW or even a huge Toyota Prado parked in front of a LeoPalace building.
I mean, the car is bigger than the apartment in some cases.
The point I’m trying to make is that the proverb the clothes make the man is a very superficial expression.
It may be correct for first impressions, but lasting opinions are built on a foundation of substance.
Shiny shoes, trendy hairstyles and expensive brands don’t indicate to me how much money a person has.
They show how much money they owe.
People are like crows or magpies; we are quite often attracted to shiny objects that others have discarded.
So ladies, next time before you go crazy about a sharp-dressed man, hold back a little until you have had the opportunity to judge the substance of his character.
You may find that the clothes make the man seem better, but the jeans-and-t-shirt guy is actually better.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 72.
The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.