The Outfit

The outfit as an object has been said to be a matter of communication; a signal to others expressing who we are. As a widely held view, the logical progression of this idea is that what we wear should be an authentic expression of who we are as a person. That being said, it makes sense that Mark Zuckerberg’s new wardrobe has received a lot of criticism for being an inauthentic expression of his true self. By using Zuckerberg’s public transformation I will attempt to make the argument that the outfit isn’t an expression of the self, but the means to construct the self that begins not with an expression of who we are but with a negation of who we no longer are.

The Uniform

Over the past decade and a half, Zuckerberg’s appearance in the media has been marked by his singular look: blue jeans, gray t-shirt. When asked about why he wore the same thing every day, Zuckerberg said if he could eliminate unnecessary decisions like what to wear every day, it would give him more energy to devote to his company. Seemingly a reasonable response given his role as the CEO of Meta, the monotony of wearing the same outfit for the rest of your life seems like a Kafka story where one is transformed into a cartoon character trapped in a static world where nothing ever changes.

But in some sense so many people wear the same outfit everyday, only subtle variations allow us to say we don’t. The suffocating effect of a uniform reveals that an outgrown outfit can become a prison. While Zuckerberg’s prison was obvious, for many of us, the slight variation in what we wear obscures our fabricated limitations. Although the prison might not be immediately obvious, as time progresses, our outfits that we once embraced begin to feel like a layer of dead skin.

Staring at a closet full of clothes, thinking “I have nothing to wear”, we give in to wearing that outfit that imprisons us. But in the situation that we have something new, we must overcome the fear of judgment by a public married to the notion that one’s clothes must be an expression of who they are, and any attempt to misrepresent one’s self is a reflection of one’s poor character.

Becoming Human

But one day when we decide to boldly wear what we’ve never worn before, we find that the outfit has a transformative power. Walking down the street, or into a room, the subtle expressions that others give us alter our perception of ourselves. A double take, a lustful stare, or an approving look from someone we admire informs us that we are seen in a particular way. The outfit as a transformative force goes on to alter our perception of the world and our experience of it. In this sense the outfit is an embodied experience. Conceiving of the outfit as a form of authentic communication fails to see the outfit as a phenomenological matter that alters our perception and experience of the world. For many people, Zuckerberg’s new demeanor and outfit betrayed his robotic nature, which meant one thing: Zuckerberg was concealing the truth.

The Aesthetics of Collective Desire

In addition to getting attention for his new look, people have also been talking about Zuckerberg’s new interest in MMA. Unconcerned with which came first, the coexistence of his interest in MMA and his matching look of baggy shirts and gold chains is worth our attention.

For those who view style as a matter of semiotics, the similar appearance of members of a community is explained as a shared vocabulary that members use to communicate. In other words, chains and big T-shirts represent ideas. Attempting to reimagine the outfit without falling back on semiotics, we can think of the outfit not as a form of communication, but a means to construct a particular ontology. The clothing that characterizes a community then isn’t about communication but reflects a particular existence that members access through the ritual of getting dressed.

New outfits are not expressions of the self

Criticisms of Zuckerberg’s new look as being inauthentic rest on the assumption that the self exists prior to getting dressed. Perhaps it is this idea that turns the outfit into a prison – by conceiving of what we wear as a claim on who we are, we end up living inauthentically in order to appear authentic. By giving up the notion that the outfit is an expression of the self we make room for a new self to be articulated.