And if we could all teleport to work, the world would be a significantly easier place to navigate. But since we live in the real world and not a fantasy, there are always going to be cultural expectations for how one dresses on various occasions. You ignore them at your own peril, because if you chose to do so, it’s you who will look ignorant, and people will react to you accordingly. I didn’t make the rules, mind you. I don’t give much of a damn what people wear on most occasions, though I did think my aunt was kind of an idiot for wearing a floor-length white dress to my wedding because it make her look bad. And I’m going to think that every time I see those pictures of her drunk ass in her white non-wedding wedding dress.
Oh, you can mischaracterize everyone who disagrees with you as shrill or overly heated to make yourself seem like the Voice of Reason, but that does not change the fact that you’re defending a POV that is going against how the vast majority of the world thinks, so if you need to make yourself feel better by calling names, whatever comforts you.
Most of the time, I don’t. But at my own wedding, where I have to look at pictures of everyone periodically for the rest of my life? I care a little more. When I’m at work, and I’m expected to mete out disciplinary action for infractions of the dress code, I care a bit more. If the world were changed to “free everyone’s minds from the oppression of clothing expectations,” well, you’d have to rewire the human race. Sure, getting dressed in the morning would be a lot easier, but… forget it, kid. It ain’t gonna happen.
Except that clothing is a way to communicate. How else do you tell your new daughter-in-law that’s she’s always going to be second class in your mind? How else do you identify yourself as having a certain aesthetic or a certain obsession? All clothing is costuming. We mark our bodies to convey information about ourselves, and, as much as it sucks, you can’t opt out any more than you can refuse to acknowledge that all those sounds people make with their mouths have any meaning, or deny responsibility for the sounds that come out of your own mouth.
However, if you want to open up the boundaries of that communication at your own things and have your own get-togethers be “nudity-to-formal is ok” type things, and you seek out and encourage relationships with like-minded people, that’s cool, but showing up at a formal wedding in cut-off khakis and a dirty T-shirt and claiming there was no disrespect intended and anyone seeing disrespect was a “prisoner in their own mind” would be as silly as telling everyone “the bride has a big ass and the groom is impotent” and then claiming you just like how those syllables sound in that order.
Oh, wait, I see now. I’m the first person ever in the history of the world to express an ideal which having a conversation. One that you’re taking very personally, for some reason.
And I think that I have not made any statements regarding this point.
Actually, that’s wrong. It’s the collective decisions of individuals that creates the “rules” for society. Every time you decide to make a judgment, you’re contributing to the creation of the rules.
The OP did not ask “What is appropriate for me to wear at this occasion?” but rather (something like) “Am I justified in getting bent out of shape because this person wore this at this occasion?” I think it’s perfectly sane advice for me to react by saying, “Don’t worry about what X is wearing. That’s the approriate response.”
Maybe you shouldn’t impose your obsessions on the innocent public.
I’m really not taking it personally, though again, you can feel free to mischaracterize me to bolster your own argument. I think it’s patently ridiculous to think that clothing as a mode of expression can or should disappear from the human consciousness. It’s very deeply rooted-- might as well tell female peacocks that they shouldn’t care which male has better plumage, because it’s what’s in the male’s HEART that should matter. We care about appearances because they do communicate things about us, going to back basic fitness and health. Of course it’s gone far beyond that now, but it is part of how we understand the world on a very primal level. I’m sure that, despite your many protestations to the contrary, you feel some of the same judging impulses. It’s quite natural and part of being alive, I think.
Let he who has never judged cast the first stone. I guarantee the atmosphere remains stone-free.
Well, you’re really failing to evaluate the actual issue here. It’s not about the clothing per se, it’s about the statement the individual is trying to make with the clothing choice. That’s what the whole point of this thread is-- it’s not to enslave people with picayne or byzantine social mandates about how to dress. It’s to figure out what the other person is trying to say to you with her clothing choice. I think the OP was really asking, “Was my step-daughter trying to tell me something by wearing white to my wedding? Or is it really possible that someone could not know that wearing white to her father’s wedding makes her look like she’s trying to fuck with me?”
If you’d responded with, “Who gives a damn what your step-daughter was trying to say, she looks petty and passive-aggressive by communicating her feelings through her inappropriate clothing choice at your wedding,” then I would wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment, though it is very hard to ignore it when you feel like someone is deliberately trying to offend you at your own wedding. Also, one might be concerned about what this whole rigamarole means for future relations with the step-daughter, if indeed she was communicating hostility.
You took it further and claimed that everyone who uses clothing to communicate is mentally enslaved. That’s a bit much of a statement for most people to agree with, I hope you understand.