When I was in high school I was really into psychoanalysis and philosophy. So much so that I wanted to major in psychology.
I told my mom my plans.
She suggested I just go to the library and read the books instead.
I didn’t really like that answer.
So I waited for my dad to get home and asked him what he thought.
“You can do whatever you want,” he said. “Just remember, when you declare your major, you declare your tax bracket too.”
I ended up choosing a different major.
I have mixed feelings about my parents’ advice, but I can’t complain too much. It has helped me stay employed.
I still spent most of my twenties reading philosophy and psychology books. I can’t remember the last time I picked one up now. It’s been well over ten years.
After a certain point, acquiring more knowledge starts to have diminishing returns.
The other day, however, Sartre’s Being and Nothingness came back to me.
Specifically, his idea of The Look.
Sartre describes The Look as the moment you become aware that another person is seeing you. You stop existing and begin experiencing yourself through someone else’s eyes.
I don’t think Sartre was dropping fashion tips here. But I do think he accidentally described something style culture trains us to practice.
Getting dressed slowly stops being about choosing clothes. Instead it becomes seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes before they even see you.
You start managing potential interpretations.
After a while, you stop experiencing clothing directly and start experiencing yourself as something to be evaluated.
Sartre writes that awareness of another person’s gaze can produce shame.
You begin perceiving yourself as an object in someone else’s world.
I think that’s where much of my embarrassment came from.
I wasn’t just wearing clothes.
I was drawing body sketches, taking countless pictures , obsessively tailoring outfits, shopping excessively, trying to anticipate how others would interpret my appearance and making sure it all looked “effortless” in the process.
Those behaviors didn’t come out of nowhere. They reflected a growing habit of experiencing myself through someone else’s eyes.
Sartre suggests this feeling is just part of the human condition.
I suspect he’s right.
Style culture didn’t invent it, but it does give you more and more reasons to experience it.
That’s part of what makes this complicated. I don’t think this gaze is entirely avoidable.
Whether encouraging or uncomfortable , feedback from other people is often necessary. Sometimes another person’s perspective helps us see things we can’t see ourselves.
The problem begins when the imagined audience never leaves.
Style culture quietly teaches you to begin with someone else’s eyes: What will people think?
I think it’s better to begin somewhere else: What is it like to wear this?
Other people still exist and their opinions still matter, but they stop being the starting point.
There’s no escaping other people’s gaze. The question is whether it becomes the only one that matters.
Maybe that’s what “Hell is other people” was getting at.