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Comment by lottin | Hacker News Reader

I understand the advantages of dressing casually, but when I watch a video from the mid 20th century the first thing that strikes me (in a positive way) is that ordinary people took pride in their personal appearance. Nowadays it feels like people just don't care about their looks.

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part of that appearance was being fit, you see very few obese in older pictures and the very obese were confined to carnival shows.

Working around some BMI 40+ and its not like there is much choice for professional looking clothing that looks good. Get to the 50+ and it just gets worse.

I just am amazed at how far back they traced the change in attitudes. Still I remember that day when IBM (contracting) announced its change in dress code and suddenly jeans were in. I think this was 95 or 96?

If Google is right (I'm using this for reference: http://weight.optyourlife.com/i03784mages/bmi_40.jpg), almost no kind of clothes will make you look good at BMI 50.

I dress casually in the office, but take pride in how I look. I always wear clean, well fitting clothes, and make an effort to keep my colours well thought out. You might find me dressed in shorts and a tee shirt with a pair of vans, but it's not because I don't care about my appearance.

Did they take pride in it, or did they just feel pressured to look like they took pride in it?

People can dress for their own pleasure too, it's not necessarily about conformity.

Of course, people do both. Perhaps the question should have been how many took pride, and how many just felt pressured.

Selection bias. Of course the people being filmed are more likely to have been well dressed.

I don't think so, there're a lot of videos from the streets and almost everyone is dressed well. Sure, as a man you didn't have much of a choice back then when it comes to clothes, but nevertheless everyone looked much better than nowadays in my opinion.

"Nowadays it feels like people just don't care about their looks."

Do you think that is a bad thing?

I do think it is a bad thing.

why?

I don't know why I'm getting downvoted here. No matter how I look at it, I can't see anything negative in people not caring about their looks.

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