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Comment by moksly | Hacker News Reader

I think it’s absolutely amazing how much we put into looks and first impressions. My story is the opposite of yours, being a fit white Scandinavian cisgendered male who looks the part of an IT/banking manager when I’m clean cut. The amount of privilege afforded to me based purely on my looks and what I’m wearing is just insane, and I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve often used it to my advantage.

These days I look like a hippie, sporting a full corona beard, coloured or happy message t-shirts, stretchy jeans and sandals. And it’s a whole different story, people offer me no leeway. Ironically my career and I guess wealth/status has progressed exactly opposite to my looks. So people should really stop judging anyone at face value.

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Even then, it is quite likely that people offer you a ton of leeway still. It's only in comparison to your previous style that you see the reduction.

A friend of mine is considered white in the country he was born in (Guyana) and black in the country he's in now (Canada), and despite being always extremely well groomed and styled, he still ends up being very very clearly followed by security whenever he goes shopping. In comparison I've been to those places while looking more than scruffy, not showered, etc.. and have received nods and smiles from the security in every one of those places. Sometimes it's even happening simultaneously: if we enter separately only one of us gets followed. And this is downtown Toronto, one of the supposedly most diverse cities on Earth.

Oh, you’re absolutely right about that. I probably wouldn’t be able to pull off my hippie look in my position if I wasn’t a Scandinavian man.

People just don’t automatically attribute me with financial power anymore. On the flip-side, anything “being a dad” related is much better now that people assume I work less.

>> Ironically my career and I guess wealth/status has progressed exactly opposite to my looks.

A friend of mine is an engineering consultant (software) and looks shabby. He met me for lunch one day after seeing a client and I said "you went to see them like that?" He said it's part of the uniform. It sends a message about being good enough not to worry about superficial impressions. I'm sure in some cases that's true.

This is so true. There's been a lot of times when I cleaned up my look and wore really nice clothes to work, just because I felt like looking good -- and the number of "going for a job interview?" jokes I got all the time was countless. It's like a requirement to dress down.

I got a more conservative haircut once and the CEO asked if I was job hunting.

Then again it might be more due to the change compared to the baseline.

Ugh, that joke was thrown around so many times at our office, whenever anyone dared show up to work in a button-down shirt and slacks. Or some variant like "Good luck on your job interview today!" or "Looks like you need to take an extra long lunch today. Let me know how it went."

Also bandied about here in the UK as an accompaniment to that is: "Going to court?"

"Yes, I've been stealing hearts."

> "going for a job interview?"

I always reply with "every day is a job interview, baby" and do cheesy finger guns. That shuts them up.

The "uniform" thing is very true. I'm a software developer in the Pacific Northwest who loves to wear suits (they look damn good on me). I was told long ago that jeans and a hoodie are the de-facto uniform of my profession, and I needed to dress the part.

That got really hammered home when I showed up to a job interview in a button-down shirt and slacks and I was _far_ more dressed-up than the CEO. Getting bounced for not being a "culture fit" cleared up any lingering ambiguity.

I'm a t-shirt and jeans person but I will never go to an in-person interview without a button-down shirt. If a company judges me negatively for wearing that then it's not a place I want to work.

The opposite thing happened to me. I work as a lawyer and I was advised to get nicer suits and grow a beard to look older. I was told that my work was good, but appearances mattered. They said that I wasn't looking trustworthy enough to be presented to clients.

Once while giving a talk at a dev conference I was heckled just after being introduced. This was over 10 years ago but it was something to the effect of "get off the stage, suit". I wasn't wearing a suit but apparently my overall look screams "sales guy"...

I was pleasantly surprised when I completed my talk and the guy who heckled me (I never even saw him) came up to me and apologized. Then again this was in Toronto so maybe the old stereotype about apologetic Canadians is more true than not!

The "shabby nerd" stereotype is a very real thing and it goes both ways.

I dont think it is amazing at all. It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint.

Adhering to aesthetic cues signals conforming with society at large. If you are not in, you are clearly a threat. For example, if you dont follow simpler things, what bona fides can you provide that you will respect fundamental aspects of the society you are part of?

First impressions are a self-preservation mechanism.

Its not illogical. That being said this presents very interesting diamond-in-the-rough opportunities to visionaries

I've seen something similar with my fitness. I've gone from competitive powerlifter to very obese to moderately fit, and the ways in which it changes the way almost everyone interacts with you, all the time, is just insane - from the quite subtle (being more deferential, more pleasant, slightly more generous with their time) to not subtle at all ("you're so smart! You look so shy; I wouldn't have guessed you're so smart until you started speaking.")

I wonder if some of that is that you also behave differently when more fit vs not. Like maybe more subconsciously confident when fit?

I feel like that's pretty likely a bigger element of it when I was younger, though I'm sure it always figures in to some degree. Although part of it is circular: when people all treat you like you're nicer/smarter/etc. you feel more confident, too.

But some of it was just a bit too much of a stretch to just be confidence. I'm /generally/ a pretty confident person, and comfortable with people, and the difference in how many people suddenly can vs. can't find the time of day for you is pretty dramatic.

And, of course, some of it was just not subtle at all. I'd been told pretty frankly I was too fat to be a doctor. Because, you know, clearly my personal struggles with my weight have a direct correlation to my ability to diagnose your ailment. (Okay, I'm still salty about that one.)

Slightly off topic, I bought a pair of "stretchy jeans" recently but didn't know the term or know how to define what was good about them, so thanks for that! (Apparently there was some effort put into marketing these jeans - ostensibly "women's clothing" - to men https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/jeggings-... )

I've heard stories from salesmen at Porsche dealers that the people who come in puffed up, clean cut and suited are more likely to buy a base mode;, while the guys who buy the top end cars are often scraggly looking. Definitely something to be said for being successful enough you're no longer trying to convince people you're successful.

...by buying a top of the line Porsche?

Most of the top line Porsche are very performance oriented versions of each model with some pretty radical departures from normal car features. Lack of back seats, rollcages, hard racing suspension, loud. The people that buy these are after race cars for the street.

You might be shocked to find that people buy top-end kit to impress absolutely no one. I have a top-of-the-line BMW motorcycle. I don't care if you know that, nor if you are impressed (you shouldn't be, they're less expensive than many Harleys). I bought it because I wanted it, and it would do the things I wished it to do.

I was, however, probably the scraggliest customer in the showroom when I bought it.

Everyone in auto sales has a story like this. The moral is to never judge someone by their looks. Always act like they're going to buy.

Anecdote: I once was able to board a high speed train going back to my home country while carrying a license plate from the country of departure and I only got a slight frown from the train officer(?) when I handed out my first class ticket (for a really long travel).

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