ISSUE208

TOPIC: ISSUE208 - "The way people look, dress, and act reveals their attitudes and interests. You can tell much about a society's ideas and values by observing the appearance and behavior of its people."
WORDS: 551 TIME: 00:49:31 DATE: 2008/8/1 14:02:47

The speaker asserts that people's attitudes and interests can be revealed by the way they look, dress, and act, which I cannot agree more with. But I hold the opposite view with the speaker that by observing the appearance and behavior of its people, we can tell much about a society's ideas and values.

To begin with, the way people look, dress, and act actually reveals their attitudes and interests. For example, people always want to demonstrate their personalities by dressing the suitable clothes. The casual person usually wear jeans and T-shirts to express his relax attitudes towards the life, while the uniform or business suit represent a person's serious and precise attitudes. Furthermore, somebody wears sports clothes all the time, means he or she is good or at least interested in sports. So, we can judge one's attitudes and interests by their look, dress and act sometimes.

In addition, under certain circumstances, we can tell about a society's ideas and values by the appearance and behavior of its people. The France is famous for its people's smiles which you can feel wherever you are, such as in the parties, roads or even the corner of small path. The smile, in fact, reveals that the French people are all friendly and easy to get along with and the France is a romantic nation which is known by the whole world. In addition, in the 1960's or 1970's, when China did not open herself to the world, nearly all the Chinese people wear Chinese tunic suits, which was a sign of tradition and conservative. However, after the reform and opening-up in 1984, during the approximately thirty years, China have been had big changes, which can be reflected by people dressing. Nowadays, Chinese wears what they want, ranged from business suits to jeans and T-shirts, which actually reveals the Chinese society's ideas and values.

Notwithstanding, it is not enough for demonstrating a society's ideas and values to only observe the appearance and behavior of its people. With the development of our society, we may need to participant in many different activities in which we have to wear different and suitable clothes. For instance, we must dress business suits to anticipant in a formal conference while in order to take part in a picnic with close friend, we are ought to wear jeans and T-shirts. So, we cannot tell the society's ideas and values, because modern people always dress differently under different situation. Furthermore, there is another example for demonstrating this idea. In the Second World War, nearly all the Germans wear uniforms, which cannot reflect the people's attitudes, because the government forced all of them to dress like that. It is possible that not all the Germany society were crazy in war. So, we cannot misunderstand the attitudes of Germans and the ideas and values of the society by simply observing what they wear, due to the force of the Nazi.

Generally speaking, there are more important factors for telling much about a society's ideas and values besides the observation of the appearance and behavior of its people, such as history, culture and so forth. In addition, there is no doubt that it is the fundament that history and culture of a society, while what the people have done is just the appearance.