Most people also subconsciously kind of do. People are going to tend to treat a guy wearing jeans and a hoodie, with bit of stubble differently than they would treat the same guy if he was clean shaven, in a well-tailored suit, than they would if he was in a grimy work clothes than if if he was wearing slacks and a polo… And that’s going to depend on you and the kind of experiences you’ve had and what kind of associations your brain has made with people who look certain ways. You almost certainly have some biases about this even if you don’t realize it.
But those opinions can also be manipulated.
Let’s look at John Fetterman, who is somewhat famous for wearing shorts and a hoodie whenever he can get away with it instead of the suit we normally associate with a politician.
(And let’s pretend it’s 2019, before the stroke and he went mask-off as the piece of shit he’s always kind of been.)
Democrats, overall, tended to look at him as a bit of a breath of fresh air. This wasn’t some well-groomed schmuck in a suit like all the other politicians we’ve come to know and hate. He looks like that guy you see at the local bar or riding the bus with you or out buying something at Walmart at 10pm to fix his leaky toilet because the hardware store is closed. He was sold as someone more like us, who shares our frustrations, and who was going to fight for us, and for a lot of people that worked.
And let’s be real, have you ever looked at the fetterman-looking guy next to you on the bus and thought “yeah, this guy seems like he knows what he’s doing, I’d vote for him?” No, probably not. You probably didn’t think much about him at all. But based on how he dressed, you probably still subconsciously made some assumptions about him, like maybe whether or not he looked like someone you’d get along with, you may not have gotten as far as thinking about what he does for a living, but odds are that if you were asked to guess you probably wouldn’t have said that he’s a politician, you’d probably have guessed he works some sort of normal, dead-end job like the rest of us. If you saw a guy in a suit who wasn’t at a funeral or something, you’d probably be more likely to assume he works in, maybe not politics, but maybe a law firm, or in some sort of finance, that wherever he works he’s probably not the lowest guy on the totem pole, etc.
Republicans, on the other hand, played things up the other way- that he showed disrespect to his office, if he can’t even be bothered to put on a suit and clean himself up a bit, can he really be trusted to do his job as a politician, etc. and that also worked for a lot of people on their side.
But to a lot of those same Republicans, you could also easily spin things differently and they’d eat it up just as readily. If Fetterman ran as a Republican (and as we’re seeing now, he sure could have) the spin machine would probably have been more like:
“This is what a real man looks like. He doesn’t wear skinny jeans or purple hair, he’s wearing shorts, not a skirt. He’s not some out-of-touch politician in a fancy suit from a metropolis like Philly or Pittsburgh, he’s a real working man from Braddock in the heart of pennsyltucky, where people are farmers and loggers and harvest clean-burning natural gas from the same earth that our forefathers worked for generations until those gay commies from the big city tried to take it away. He owns a shotgun and he’s not afraid to point it at the first black guy who cares to run past his house.”
Fast forward a few years, if Fetterman was just entering politics now, saying he’d vote the way he has been, a lot of us would probably assume he’s a Republican, and be outraged that they’re not even trying to hide what they are by trying to install some skinhead-looking motherfucker who’s not even trying to look like a politician, they obviously just want some puppet who will vote for their bullshit.
So those opinions are malleable and can be shaped by the context and what other people are saying about them.
And politicians and the media are aware of that and try to use it to their advantage.
If some talking head never pointed out that Obama was wearing a tan suit, most people probably would never have given it a second thought.
For most of us a suit is a suit and we’re not looking into it a whole lot beyond that. Maybe, maybe we notice if the suit fits well, or is wrinkled, or is a really outdated style or otherwise a particularly unusual style choice, but so few of us wear or are around people in suits often enough that we just don’t have an eye for those kinds of details. We might clock a lighter colored suit as somewhat less formal than a darker colored one, but we’d still think that almost any suit is still appropriately dressy for just about anything but a funeral (in which case the suit should be dark,) a tan suit wouldn’t exactly turn heads in any board room or what-have-you, and previous presidents have worn tan suits without a lick of controversy.
Some people do have stronger opinions about style and what level of formality is appropriate for different occasions, but most of those people aren’t in any position where we’re going to give much weight to their opinions.
But some talking head latched onto that idea one way or another and realized they could spin up a bit of controversy over it, and their base was already primed to hate Obama for any reason they could come up with, so they latched right onto that idea. If it hadn’t been pointed out to them, I doubt anyone would have even noticed.
Most people do not consciously give a shit.
Most people also subconsciously kind of do. People are going to tend to treat a guy wearing jeans and a hoodie, with bit of stubble differently than they would treat the same guy if he was clean shaven, in a well-tailored suit, than they would if he was in a grimy work clothes than if if he was wearing slacks and a polo… And that’s going to depend on you and the kind of experiences you’ve had and what kind of associations your brain has made with people who look certain ways. You almost certainly have some biases about this even if you don’t realize it.
But those opinions can also be manipulated.
Let’s look at John Fetterman, who is somewhat famous for wearing shorts and a hoodie whenever he can get away with it instead of the suit we normally associate with a politician.
(And let’s pretend it’s 2019, before the stroke and he went mask-off as the piece of shit he’s always kind of been.)
Democrats, overall, tended to look at him as a bit of a breath of fresh air. This wasn’t some well-groomed schmuck in a suit like all the other politicians we’ve come to know and hate. He looks like that guy you see at the local bar or riding the bus with you or out buying something at Walmart at 10pm to fix his leaky toilet because the hardware store is closed. He was sold as someone more like us, who shares our frustrations, and who was going to fight for us, and for a lot of people that worked.
And let’s be real, have you ever looked at the fetterman-looking guy next to you on the bus and thought “yeah, this guy seems like he knows what he’s doing, I’d vote for him?” No, probably not. You probably didn’t think much about him at all. But based on how he dressed, you probably still subconsciously made some assumptions about him, like maybe whether or not he looked like someone you’d get along with, you may not have gotten as far as thinking about what he does for a living, but odds are that if you were asked to guess you probably wouldn’t have said that he’s a politician, you’d probably have guessed he works some sort of normal, dead-end job like the rest of us. If you saw a guy in a suit who wasn’t at a funeral or something, you’d probably be more likely to assume he works in, maybe not politics, but maybe a law firm, or in some sort of finance, that wherever he works he’s probably not the lowest guy on the totem pole, etc.
Republicans, on the other hand, played things up the other way- that he showed disrespect to his office, if he can’t even be bothered to put on a suit and clean himself up a bit, can he really be trusted to do his job as a politician, etc. and that also worked for a lot of people on their side.
But to a lot of those same Republicans, you could also easily spin things differently and they’d eat it up just as readily. If Fetterman ran as a Republican (and as we’re seeing now, he sure could have) the spin machine would probably have been more like:
Fast forward a few years, if Fetterman was just entering politics now, saying he’d vote the way he has been, a lot of us would probably assume he’s a Republican, and be outraged that they’re not even trying to hide what they are by trying to install some skinhead-looking motherfucker who’s not even trying to look like a politician, they obviously just want some puppet who will vote for their bullshit.
So those opinions are malleable and can be shaped by the context and what other people are saying about them.
And politicians and the media are aware of that and try to use it to their advantage.
If some talking head never pointed out that Obama was wearing a tan suit, most people probably would never have given it a second thought.
For most of us a suit is a suit and we’re not looking into it a whole lot beyond that. Maybe, maybe we notice if the suit fits well, or is wrinkled, or is a really outdated style or otherwise a particularly unusual style choice, but so few of us wear or are around people in suits often enough that we just don’t have an eye for those kinds of details. We might clock a lighter colored suit as somewhat less formal than a darker colored one, but we’d still think that almost any suit is still appropriately dressy for just about anything but a funeral (in which case the suit should be dark,) a tan suit wouldn’t exactly turn heads in any board room or what-have-you, and previous presidents have worn tan suits without a lick of controversy.
Some people do have stronger opinions about style and what level of formality is appropriate for different occasions, but most of those people aren’t in any position where we’re going to give much weight to their opinions.
But some talking head latched onto that idea one way or another and realized they could spin up a bit of controversy over it, and their base was already primed to hate Obama for any reason they could come up with, so they latched right onto that idea. If it hadn’t been pointed out to them, I doubt anyone would have even noticed.