h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some people say they don't care about how people look and how they dress. Hey, I'm only 14 but i can say that is not true. No matter what you do, you will some how react to a person from the way they look.

For example, when you first meet a person, for instance at a bus stop, the first thing you are going to know from them is their apperance. From that, you can decide to talk to them or not.

Another thing is if you are lost and you want to ask someone for direction and there are two people in front of you, who would you ask? the man with weird smelly clothes who has piercing and tatoos all over his body or the man with clean shaved face with a sophisticated look? I admit, I would have asked the clean shaved man.

But, what you don't know is the that the man with weird smelly clothes had just helped the homeless people from a church and the clean shaved man had came out of jail yesterday for rape and murder.
Who would you ask now?

What i'm trying to say is that apperance does matter in our lives. It may not be a lot but it still is and we are making that matter. Some people might still think, hey that's not me, maybe this person but not me. But you know what they say, it's easy to point at other people but hard to point at yourself.
Ok, so that's what i think. Now i want to know what you think.

On the tube in London, the men in business suits will never help anyone, get up for a pregnant women to sit, or try to save a child being dragged by their hand being caught in the door and slowly going under the train.

The weird guy though, often will.

I am more intimadated by men in smart suits than by man in biker gear or covered with piercings and tattoos. But thats based on the way they behave. I know a guy so covered in piercings and tattoos that everyone stops and stares, hes a lovely guy though.

The way that we appear is a filter through which the world views us, I am a university student and as such people believe that I am able to drop what I am doing to help them.

I notice that appearance is usually inversley proportional to age. Youngsters put far more import into appearance than the older generations. Not to say that the middle-age to wrinkly set are scruffy by any stretch!

You rarely find an elderly lady sporting a plethora of metalwork in her face (unless the dentures have become very loose), similarly the only place you will find a safety pin on a retired gentleman generally is holding his fly zipper up!

Not that I am ageist, or for that matter youth-ist. It is just that if you walk down the average street in the average town, the youth are vaguely tribal in their dress and demeanour (as was I in my youth) and the (less young) generations seem to settle into a style rather than a fashion.

Its all about money and the exhibition of it. The well-dressed gentleman may have arrived at wealth by less than honest means, although the scruffy bloke may be the same, but less successful at it! Then again, there are wonderful people who care less about appearance and more about others. Pity there weren't badges for them eh?

Well at some point the young with piercings etc will grow older and then you will see older people walking around like that. Its just a case of the present older generation never had that chance, and it wasn't in fashion then.