All through high school, I was judged because of how I dressed. Granted, I was aware that my outfits were not generally purchased from the same stores as the clothes the “popular kids” wore. Asking my parents to spend $150 on a shirt to have the “benefit” of advertising a designer’s name just didn’t make sense to me.

But now I find myself doing the same thing, only in reverse. When I go out to a club or show, I often look around and giggle to myself. It amuses me to see people work so hard to look a certain way – a way that I don’t even find the least bit attractive. Guys in $50 skintight black T-shirts. Girls in $200 boots that they can barely walk in owing to the 5″ heel. People, everywhere I turn, wearing the most expensive clothing they can find – even though they could get good knockoff versions at lesser prices if they were willing to lower themselves to shopping at certain stores.

I think the reason for my judgmental attitude is that I feel clothes can tell a lot about a person. People dressed in comfy jeans and a well-worn shirt seem confident and sure of themselves. Someone in a hip but reserved outfit seems stylish but not overdone. Someone in funky clothing seems – well, funky. These are all qualities I look for in possible friends. But when someone is dressed in skintight, over priced, Brittany Spears/MTV-style

clothing, I automatically feel they are insecure, uptight, stuffy, self-centered, needy of attention, or any combination thereof.

Call me hypercritical. Call me judgmental. Hell, call me a clothes bigot. Just remember that they started it first, making fun of me in the ninth grade for not knowing that everyone who was anyone would be caught dead

before wearing a pair of “oh so out of style” Puma sneakers