2005.06.25 Skins
People have this terrible affinity for oversimplification, thus transforming the relatively benign distinction between appearance and content into a metaphoric rift that denies any connection. Well, there are connections, and to ignore them is plain folly.
Firstly, you can tell a lot about a book from it's cover. While it is true that the fundamental art of the wordsmith can be well-concealed behind the cover, it is generally not in the bookmakers interests to have a drastic disparity between what the cover would seem to contain and the actual contents themselves. Moreover, the basic form and configuration of a book says a lot about the likely format of the content, and the condition and construction of the book gives many clues about what the reading experience might be like from a practical book-propping point of view. But enough of this metaphor; I just thought I'd tackle it first for sport.
Signs of our true selves are revealed in the careful scrutiny of us. I may not have many social skills, but I am a very observant watcher of people, and it has been my overwhelming experience that most everybody shows a great deal of meaningful aspect that can be seen by those who look carefully enough.
Beauty, for example, is most certainly not skin deep. Setting aside the complex interplay of health and beauty, which I admit can sometimes be temporarily approximated with cloth and goo, there must also be the will (if not the conviction) to hold and move the body in a manner that gesticulates beauty. There's also the deeper aspect that it takes an aesthetic to define beauty in the first place, which requires a mysterious weighing of sensory perceptions. Seeing a beautiful person reveals a connection between you and that person, that says something about their physiology, perhaps their mood, maybe even their soul, and certainly something about your perspective.
On a more detailed level, because of how much time we spend in our skins, they end up reflecting our more typical conditions. A lifetime of smiling or frowning is plainly obvious on people before they get very far into adulthood. Also, those without such lines reveal themselves to be people who might not have had any reasons to laugh or frown, yet, and are likely quite boring. Those that tend to run and frolic almost always have bodies that reflect how much they do these things, just as people who are dedicated to sitting develop bodies well-suited for that. I have a friend whose left hand is generally in a slightly mangled state, bearing wounds inflicted by whatever tool was being wielded by the right hand as he tried to employ it on whatever was being held by the left hand. I have a grandfather whose hands are so stained from the grease and grime of his labours and efforts that I don't doubt that his bones sport smudges.
So too do clothes end up reflecting us. Sometimes the messages we try to convey with our clothing are deliberate, and sometimes it's not. How important these messages are depends on personal opinion, but there is no doubting that there are messages nonetheless. This is, of course, a segue into the real topic of this rant...
The cars people drive also show who they are, in a way. Sure, it might just be circumstance that has someone driving a certain car, but you can still divine what kind of circumstance that might be. For those that actually have control over what car they drive, this choice can reveal things in several diverging realms. The car can imply things about status and style, about power and purpose. It can also be a statement about priorities, and inclinations. But all these things might actually be things that the driver has yet to discover about themselves. In fact, I suspect that a person's sensibilities and perceptions can be significantly altered by what they drive.
So it is that when I notice a sports car there is more than just some superficial visual appeal or some dry engineering appreciation. It is also a sighting of a kindred soul, of a sort, glowing beneath the sleek metal skin. And also why I am compelled to consider so carefully what exotic steed to purchase - because I know that it represents something that I will become.