I got checked out by a very attractive woman a couple days ago when I was at the bank. And I know that a lot of women look at men and that’s not a big deal. But this was a Starship Enterprise Planetary Surface-scan of a look. I kept walking to the ATM area because I knew that if I made eye-contact I would have ended up on tractor-beam ghost lockdown. Why did she look at me in this way? I was dressed in nice clothes and a blazer. That’s all.
The clothing is an illusion. It probably looked like I had some money and a decent job. In fact I had more money years ago when I would roll into the bank wearing a t-shirt from hot topic. But it doesn’t matter because the clothing creates a very colorful illusion that the mind can make tremendous amounts of assumptions on.
Now if you combine clothing with posture and body language a whole slew of assumptions can be made. People will come up with the wildest back stories for a stranger in a microsecond.
I hadn’t been at a bar in a long time because I don’t drink. But when I went to one a couple weeks ago to meet an old friend for his birthday, I could feel the difference in energy levels. It’s a whole different world from Jack in the Box or even Starbucks lemme tell yah.
At the bar I had come from seeing a film for school. At school I was wearing a t-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt. But when I parked near the bar, I decided to leave the hoodie in the car because I wanted to look extraverted and hoodies are warm and send signals that you are either cold or feel isolated. The only problem was that the t-shirt was the one that I bought for a costume party. So it was a V-neck t-shirt with sassy designs on it.
I looked in the car window to see how I looked and I thought, “hmm this isn’t my style…but hey I’ll just play the part.”
So I walked into the bar and had body language that made me look like I was trying to balance a pencil with my upper lip. And you know what? I got pretty fast and polite service! And within minutes I talked to some girls so that was fun.
-Tyler
