While still wondering about wheter what we own or wear defines us in the eyes of others (eyebrows? expensive cologne? glasses? cars?), I immediately thought that friends judge us by our personality and skills. Strangers or people we only see occasionally (like co-workers) use other things to build their mental image of us. What about the fact that supposedly 80% of first impression is based on looks? What about commercials telling us we’re only successful if we drive this car and wear that brand name? What about people pigeonholing other people using a feature that stands out, like an eccentric car or knee-high white leather boots?

An anecdote on “your stuff isn’t you” — something I heard in a university course in the linguistics department about sign language: If I remember correctly, people in the deaf community are not regularly called by their names, but by nicknames that describe them or the most obvious (visual) thing about them. For example, if someone always wears a red hat, his nickname is “red hat” in sign language. Even if he throws the hat away, his name will always be “red hat”. If someone is overweight, their nickname might be “heavy”, even if he or she loses the weight (and the nickname is not meant to be mean or discriminatory, it’s just a matter-of-fact description, easy for everyone to see).

While I know that I MUST have reliable transportation, I genuinely miss driving my truck. I’m still on the fence about how much of that is emotional attachment and how much of it is resistance based on the things about this car that genuinely do not work well for me and my lifestyle.

Kat, why did you shave your eyebrows? Just curious.

Example: I wear glasses with thick black frames. I’ve only worn glasses for a couple of years, I’ve only had these particular ones for less than a year, and I only wear them at work. In my mind, and to most people I know, they don’t define me or my appearance in any way; but people I work with who have only ever seen me with them on have trouble recognizing me when I’m not wearing them, and vice versa. Just today, I walked into a meeting with several people I had met before getting my new glasses, and they all introduced themselves to me as though they’d never seen me before in their lives. Only once I introduced myself did they seem to remember having met me.

So. Do my glasses define me? By the standards of this study, and in my work environment, one would be tempted to say yes. So then, isn’t every eyeglass-wearer essentially defined by their “stuff” to some extent?

The point I’m trying to make is this: the choices we make in how we present ourselves to the world do define us in people’s eyes. The way you shape of your eyebrows is as much of a choice as a particular style of dress, or a pair of glasses, or your personal values. “Stuff” is expendable, true. But it doesn’t mean it’s devoid of meaning, and it certainly doesn’t mean it has no role in defining us to the outside world…

And thanks for the “who” does find this stuff worthy of “working on”.

Personally, I wouldn’t shave my eyebrows off. They’d probably grow back twice as thick, and then I’d look like Cousin Itt with a monk’s tonsure.

The companies that create facial recognition and surveillance software; the government & private organizations that use it; the non-profits that object to surveillance; psychologists studying human mental processing.

And the occasional really rich private scientist, but such are rare these days.