I started a little psychologic project of mine some months ago. It's quite simple. I neglected care for my face (let my beard and hair grow without straightining or cumbing them or anything (unless washing)).Let me tell you this already: it really looked ugly (ok, uglier than before :-) ), (as multiple times confirmed by some of my friends and colleauges of which some really couldn't gasp at all why I am doing this), but especially at the beginning (when the beard wasn't that full and the hair still went every direction). (The attached photograph is about a week ago, so far from the beginning).
The purpose was to find out for myself -subjectivily of course, how can it be else in such a setup- if people really acted differently on 'looks' like everyone seems to be so certain about.
Another purpose was to train myself more on not caring of other people's opinions and approvals (to have not even a repressed feeling). Thrust me, I am already doing this less than like 90% of the sheep population, that probably don't know it themselves, but I wanted more. I wanted my mind to be more free in this way. I believe we are too subjective to other people's approval and it tampers with our thoughts and principles too much. Partly why, IMHO, we don't change into better people anymore and are accepting all the bad behavior (not mentioning T.V, but that's another story).
The whole 'experiment' has been going on now for about 2months and I am not sure if i am continuing it or not when writing this.
Well, the results are quite controversial and all but conclusive for myself.
What I noticed was the following:
- People stared more at me as before, though most of them hid this. I cought their looks by the corner of my eye and when looking at them, their faces went smooth or blank again.
- A handfull of people stared straight at me without hiding it (unless untill I kept staring back longer then they found interesting). When I refrained myself from staring back immediatly, I got a record for like 20' (with non-looking intervals of course!) (in a pita bar at the Vooruit in Ghent)!
-Another handfull laughed at me (in the ridiculing kind of way) in my face or laughed at me and couldn't hide it when I noticed it and looked at them. Some of these just hád to talk and laugh about it with there immediate environment.
- (Amazingly), I also experienced a handfull of people that reacted friendlier(!!) at me. Did they pitty me ? Did they understood my statement about looks ? ...?
After all, I still believe looks are a big part of judgement and (immediate) reaction in this society, but I find this test failed because I had not enough reactions that were giving an idea of its content because most people hid it too well and others were too few to conclude anything (though I have a very subjective 'feeling' they were all negative).
What I did find out at least is that it ís noticed and reacted to unmistakably!
No surprise, but at least I found out unmistakably without accepting what seems logic or what everyone claims.
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