I’ve always wanted to wear The Big Earrings. You know the ones. The bold, brazen, absolutely fabulous kind in bright colours or with mutiple tiers that dangle and dazzle and Take! Up! Space!
They’re a witty joke, confidently delivered in accessory form, worn almost exclusively by people who seem both unfalteringly confident and terrifically witty. The kind of earrings that deserve proper noun capitalisation, like a person or a city.
I’ve been thinking of big earrings because I’ve been seeing them. Everywhere. A current subject of what’s technically called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon but what we commonly call ‘I-became-aware-of-this-thing-and-now-I-see-it-everywhere’.
Charging through the city to work, browsing shops on a Saturday, grabbing an evening drink, these flashy little accessories constantly catch on my conscience. Every kind as distinctive as it’s wearer.
Although, it’s only after some thought I realised the earrings may nick my attention but it’s the owners who elicit the envy. What felt like wanting to wear The Big Earrings was really a desire to be the kind of person who does.
Someone who, like their jewelry, are audacious, cheeky, and just so unnecessarily-but-delightfully FUN. A person who doesn’t ask ‘why’ but ‘why not’ when faced with a chance to make this oh-so serious life a little more, well, zesty.
And for all the chat, it’s fair if this problem seems awfully solvable. Just wear the earrings, right?
Buy a few pairs, swap out your unimaginative studs and voila, you’re done. You’re a person who wears The Big Earrings.
Life would be very different (and my wardrobe far bigger) if this tactic was effective as the retail industry would like us to believe. If we could simply reverse engineer the process of using fashion to signal identity.
As concepts go, it’s an easy one to beleive. If people who are a certain way, wear a certain thing, then surely, we could turn it inside out. Wear the thing and thus, become the person.
Unfortunately, wearing it is only half (if that) of the battle. We then must live into the personality the object represents; bold, conventional, reckless, demure, spunky.
It’s a weird amount of obligation for a $12 accessory.
Growing up I spent a lot of time on boyfriend benches while my sartorially obsessed sister tugged us through countless stores with no intention other than ‘to look’. Which, when you’re 14, seems like the most colossal waste of time, akin to the concept of coffee dates or ironing.
Not much has changed since, although it has become impossible not to see (and feel) the seductive promise clothing makes; you can be that person.
That, with this bag or that watch, those pants and blazer or dress and necklace, you can not only look the part, but you can be the part.
A promise because it’s not totally true but not entirely false either. Just the right amount of right to be optimally tempting but eventually disappointing.
Using external objects to negotiate and project our internal identities isn’t new by any means. Cognitive beings in a corporeal world, we’ve always grasped for things to be evidence of (or help manifest) a certain internal quality.
You think we would have caught onto the fact that it’s not always that easy.
Although maybe we have? But at the end of the day, it’s easier to convince ourselves a $127 pair of corduroy flared jeans is a fitting substitute for years of time and thousands of dollars of therapy. To believe we can simply put our hang-ups on a hangar and be someone else.
And maybe it’s not that ineffective of a tactic anyway? Maybe the clothes do maketh the man or at least help.
Some studies certainly say so.
In her book ‘You Are What You Wear: What Your Clothes Reveal About You’, clinical psychologist Dr Jennifer Baumgartner says, “our clothes help place us where we think we want to be.”
The technical term for this is ‘enclothed cognition’. The phrase coined by Professors Adam and Galinsky, whose 2012 study is one of the dozens proving clothes affect our cognitive skills, attention, confidence, and emotions.
It’s not all just internal either. Clothes communicate cues and messages that inform and guide how others treat us too. Suit or slacks, luxury label or thrifted threats, clothing implicitly communicates to others how we expect to be treated. Their responding behaviour ironically then bringing this aspirational identity to life.
While this particular cognitive shortcut (called representative bias) can be problematic when it comes to issues of prejudice, the fact is indisputable; when it comes to signaling our current identity to others or negotiating new identities, what we wear matters.
Facts often shrugged off by those who dismiss fashion as nothing but frivolous dress-up. A stance that seems terribly convenient as a means of undermining and ridiculing an industry so firmly owned by women. The opinion additionally creating one hell of a paradox for women who must both dedicate a monumental effort towards appearance whilst never caring about such trivial things.
Unfashionable sexists aside, enclothed cognition shows there may be some truth within the promise clothes make us. Perhaps not quite as grand a payoff as the retail industry suggests but there all the same.
The key likely lies in not only thinking of the object as the ending where all effort stops. But rather a jump start, a moment to look the part before we ‘be’ the part. Working the combination of outfit and attitude to explore who we want to be.
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Signing off,
Sarah.