Sunday, February 20, 2011

Lessons on What Not To Wear

I was watching "What Not To Wear" the other day. Trust me, I'm not obsessed. I don't even watch it every day. I do like to watch it when I get a chance though. It's improved my sense of style quite a bit which is a good thing, trust me. But this blog post really isn't about What Not To Wear. I am not going to give you any dressing tips or critique spring fashion or anything though I do wish the whole skinny jean thing wasn't quite so prevalent. I don't mind owning a few pair but seriously? And with a heavy sigh I realize that they are what is going to be on the sale racks forever now so I will be wearing them even when they aren't "in" any more. OK. Sidetracked.

On the show the other night was a woman who had earned her PHD before she turned 30. She was now working as a professor. Her field of study was something to do with social science or something closely related to that. Basically society and how people interact in that and how people function or don't etc. She dressed terribly for her job. She had decided that fashion didn't matter at all which is pretty strange because when Stacy and Clinton started talking to her she started talking about all the different ways that people's perceptions of you can change the way they treat you and how the listen to you.... etc. She seriously was not getting a clue. It was a pretty good show though because she turned out to be not be quite so resistant to change as I thought she would be in the beginning and she had a great transformation. I haven't even got to my point yet but I'm getting there now.

What really stuck out to me in this show was not the fashion or lack thereof. It really had nothing to do with the show whatsoever. I was thinking about this young woman who had gone to school her whole life this far. From the time she entered kindergarten she had been in school. Clear until she was 28 or so. And then guess what? She went to be a professor! She never left school. I'm not saying that it isn't impressive that she completed that much schooling or that it isn't impressive that while still being so young (31 I think) she is a professor. Sure. Maybe those are good accomplishments. What is really crazy is that she hasn't lived at all! She hasn't traveled. She hasn't actually learned anything about society because for the past 20+ years of her life she has been buried in books studying about society and not participating. She got great grades and talked about how she didn't go out or anything because she didn't want it to disrupt her studies. We could applaud that. I know many people who would. Dedication right? But tell me this, how in the world does she know anything about anybody? Since when could you read a pile of books and come out thinking you really understood people and how the function? How is it that someone who has experienced next to nothing be so highly praised and then raised up to teach others when all they have learned comes from the exact same books that her students are about to study? When did life experience become so useless? How is it that what is highly praised is dedication to studying paper so that you can receive a paper so that you can teach someone else exactly what the paper says?

Just sayin'

Jasmine

Every mom's gotta earn her lattes... need to get in shape?

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