If you Want to Get Weird, Get Weird: on Presentation and Perception
Just don't be offended when people think...you're weird.
Quick reminder: One of my first posts is titled “Changing your mind is a skill”...if you disagree with this or any other post, please write a comment or get in touch. I’ll even offer you a guest post if it’s well-written and presents a cogent argument.
Note: Nothing in what follows means I believe people of any kind should be discriminated against legally on basis of appearance or lifestyle choices (provided they aren't hurting anyone), nor do I believe that any class of people should be granted more or less legal rights on this basis.
I live in a city that prides itself on being weird—indeed, it’s hard to drive too far down the road before you see someone with the locally famous bumper sticker: Keep Portland Weird. Tattoos are practically mandatory here, piercing body parts other than your ears is highly encouraged, and if you don’t want to dye your hair blue, purple, gray (I will never understand why anyone would want to look artificially old, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), pink, green, or red, then you at least ought to wear a spiked belt, a leather jacket with patches, or rock a kilt. Hell, we’ve got a guy who rides a unicycle wearing a Darth Vader helmet while playing flaming bagpipes. Pretty sweet if you ask me.
I’m all for it. For many people, being weird is congruent with their true nature. The problem comes when they expect to be treated the same as a suburban dad wearing ill-fitting khakis and an old sweater. Because if you walk into a grocery store dressed as an old-timey sailor or 1980s sex worker, people are going to stare and think you’re weird. Why? Because you are.
One of the philosophical mistakes that arose sometime in the mid to late 2010’s was the idea that people can dress or behave however they want as part of their free self-expression and that this should have zero effect on how people perceive them. I’m not denying anyone’s right to behave, dress, or express themselves as they choose, but people will perceive us based on how we present, not who we are deep in our souls as individuals—that can only be known by our closest family members and friends.
This perception is based on five factors:
Appearance: physical size and body shape, clothing, hair, jewelry, tattoos, makeup if you wear it, etc.
Sex/gender: are you more masculine, feminine, androgynous, and then your actual biological sex—or what it appears to be.
Speech: what you say and how you say it.
Actions: what you do and how you do it.
Body language and intangibles: smiling, frowning, anxious, relaxed, how you relate spatially to others (like how close or far away you stand), etc.
Let’s take the first one: I’m a huge dude. Too fat right now to be sure (although I’ve lost 25lbs in the last few weeks—making progress!), but even if I was super fit, I’d still be a huge dude. And one of the things I’m constantly asked is: did you play football? I didn’t (well, one year in 8th grade), but I’m not upset when people ask—it’s a fair question, because a lot of guys my size did play football, at least in high school, if not college. And no one means any harm by it—they’re just trying to find out more about me. But the point is, their perception is entirely out of my control on this factor—I’m not going to shrink anytime soon so far as I know.
The same goes for sex/gender—at least, mostly. Obviously a man could dress like a woman, and vice-versa, but there are still physical cues: not sure if you’ve noticed, but our voices tones are different, men don’t have breasts—at least, not like female breasts—and most women don’t have the same prominent Adam’s Apple that men do, nor are they able to grow a beard or at risk of going bald, all for biological reasons related to our sexual dichotomy.
And that dichotomy is deeply important to us as human beings, both sexually and socially, because men and women are very, very different. We are subject to massively different levels of hormones throughout our entire lives and especially in adolescence, we have our own particular sexual organs, and we’ve evolved to be prone to different kinds of behavior. There’s a reason something like 93% of all prisoners are men—because men have much higher levels of testosterone, which makes us more aggressive, violent, and likely to take risks, as well as the fact that men are generally much bigger and stronger, so that when a man does something stupid it’s likely to cause more damage.
So one of the first things we notice about someone is their sex/gender, because it matters: is this person a potential mate? If he’s a man, is he likely to be violent? If she’s a woman, does she need help? Studies show that people are more likely to see women in a positive light than men, more likely to offer women help than men, etc.1 I could go on, but this is so obvious to anyone with two eyes and a functioning brain, I'll leave it there.2
However, other than our physical size/shape and sex/gender, most everything else is ours to choose: not in how we are perceived, but how we present ourselves. We choose how we speak, act, dress/accessorize, and use body language—or at least I should say, we can choose how we do these things. We all start off with an imprint that’s created by our parents, the culture we are raised in, and the other people or circumstances we encounter at a young age. But as we get older, we can alter any of these aspects of our presentation: take voice lessons if we want to speak differently, engage in social coaching to change our body language and demeanor, learn different languages or a more expansive vocabulary, etc. And people should try to become whoever it is they want to be so long as it’s in line with their true nature.
The question is how you want people to perceive you. For better or worse, the more in-line we are with social norms, fashion, and culture, the more likely we are to be perceived in a positive light. That doesn’t mean it’s bad to be different—in some cases it can be a huge advantage to stand out. However, there will always be some cost in not being “normal.” Think of it as a spectrum. There are two extremes: conservative and liberal—kinda similar to the political spectrum sans the assholery.
On the extreme conservative side, a good example would be someone who’s Amish or a devout Muslim. Their presentation to the world is almost entirely based on religious beliefs, which includes concealing their sexuality—and their presentation isn’t just in how they dress, but also how they speak, act, and exhibit body language. On the extreme liberal side is Bianca Censori, or some of the people you might meet here in Portland, where the style of dress, behavior, speech and/or action is meant, consciously or not, to provoke a strong reaction of some kind. Since I brought up politics, I’ll point out that the guy wearing a MAGA cap or gun shirt is on the liberal side—he’s trying to get a reaction. Again, no judgment here. Neither is right or wrong, good or bad. But either extreme is going to have a strong impact on how we are perceived by others.
In the middle is what you’d see if you went to a baseball game or the local mall: people mostly dressed in conventional clothes, acting and speaking in conventional ways.
This may all sound fairly obvious, but as mentioned earlier, people who find themselves on the outskirts of presenting liberally often express shock, offense, or outrage at the fact their presentation elicits a reaction from others, and that’s absurd—after all, didn’t you dress that way to get a reaction in the first place? Like If I choose to eat at McDonald’s regularly, I will get fat and feel bad, and I would expect those outcomes, because I chose to eat at McDonald’s. How you present is largely how people will perceive you, and that part is up to you.
This is also true of what we post on social media. If you’re dancing in a tight skirt and a low cut top on TikTok or Reels, people are going to think you’re a bop—because from what they can see, you are.3 I always find it ironic when a young woman has “I do it all for Him” with a cross symbol in her bio on Instagram exclusively uploads photos of herself wearing bikinis in her posts and reels. So, you’re showing us how sexy you are for Jesus? Got it.
For clarity, I don’t bring this up to “slut shame.” People should be as sexy as they want and have as much sex as they want, and if I was a woman with a hot body, I’d probably be showing it off too! All I’m suggesting is that people understand and consciously think about how they’re presenting, rather than doing whatever they want and then being SHOCKED at how others perceive them.
It is our job to adjust to the world, not the world’s job to adjust to us. And if you don't want to adjust, that’s fine, but accept it. We all need to understand that no amount of argumentation or propaganda is going to change human nature. Your opinion is just like, your opinion—it’s not on anyone else to agree, especially if it’s bullshit.
God damn I sound like such a boomer—but this has been on my mind for a while, so it needed to come out. As always, thanks for reading, and as mentioned above, if you have comments, or you disagree, please post below. I’m open to changing my mind.
Are you?
Namaste y’all!
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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5110041/
This is, unfortunately, where it’s very hard for trans people. Because unless they can pass as the sex/gender they feel deep within their soul, people are going to notice. The hope is that we get to a place where people can be polite about it: using their preferred pronouns and treating them with the same respect with which they’d treat anyone else. A corollary is that we all notice the dude in a wheelchair with no legs, but we don’t point out he can’t walk—indeed, we do our best to avoid that topic entirely, and again, treat him the same way we would treat anyone else.
The only exception comes in places where that biological difference matters in terms of fairness or sexuality. When it comes to sex, if the person doesn’t have the body parts you’re attracted to, that’s going to be a problem, and there’s no getting around that—and it doesn’t make one a bigot if they don’t want to have a sexual relationship with a trans person. No one gets to tell anyone else who they should have sex with. Ever.
When it comes to sports, it’s simply a matter of fairness: transwomen, because they are biologically male, are going to tend to be bigger and stronger than their biologically female opponents, and that’s simply not fair. Like, it’s the same reason we ban steroids or performance enhancing drugs—because even though it’s obvious that some people possess more size, strength, or athletic ability than others, the idea behind sports is that it’s a roughly even playing field. Some people are born lucky to have those attributes; others are not. No one would argue that a small, un-athletic man should get to play in the NFL because he identifies as a left tackle, right? Life isn’t fair. Alas.
And for the love of God, please trans advocates, please stop choosing these hills to die on. Let the sports controversy and sex exclusive places go, and I guarantee the vast majority of people will be on your side.
“Bop” is slang for a woman who’s had a lot of sexual partners and/or posts promiscuous content on social media.