prejudice – My Mental Model

I’m Back.

I’ve been writing in this journal for about 18 months now and throughout that time I’ve taken a few small breaks here and there. I wish I could say it was for a lack of time but that’s not the case. It’s actually the opposite. For the last several months, I’ve had an excess of time. And I’ve learned that I struggle under those conditions.

For about as long as I’ve been writing here, I’ve been employed by a start-up that was extremely well positioned to do very big things in an industry that is likely to take off like a rocket. I was genuinely excited.

I came from the finance sector, having worked in wealth management at one the most recognized banks in the world. It was a rather conservative work environment where challenging the status quo would put you on the outs. At my core, I’m constantly looking for ways to do things better.. and it just wasn’t a fit. So I thought I’d test the waters on the other side of the spectrum. Went from a massive company to a start-up. Went from a 3 piece suit dress-code to a keep your suit at home dress-code. Went from an overly conservative work environment to an overly liberal work environment.

I came in with the expectation that a far-left work environment would be all about support, individuality, openness, and being kind to one another. I was mistaken. I experienced more prejudice at that job than I had in any other work environment and it was deeply frustrating. Despite being a straight white male, I grew up as a minority and experienced plenty of racism first hand. Sometimes it was directed at me, sometimes it was a friend, sometimes it was a friend making the comments, sometimes it was me making the comments. But we were kids. Most of the time, we’d poke fun at anything available, just for the sake of teasing. But it seemed like we had grown out of it by the time we were adults. Spending most of my time in environments which at least attempted a meritocracy.. it had been a long time since people wrote me off because of what I looked like.

I was told that because I was white, I was raised to be a racist. I was asked multiple times why I drive an SUV (despite my last car being a hybrid). It was suggested that the things I had learned in the ‘corporate’ world were inherently wrong and didn’t apply to their business. I was encouraged to embrace crystal healing while told to keep my religion of science to myself. Language like ‘pushing’ an initiative out to the staff, ‘hustling’ to get something done, or ‘fighting’ for favorable regulations would trigger the people around me, ending in a drawn out conversation about how my language is racially insensitive and inherently oppressive. It drove me bonkers.

I did my best to understand what was happening and why it was happening. It was clearly connected to the culture war between our current extreme political ideologies. I was being seen as the enemy despite agreeing on most major issues. Instead, it was like they were actively looking for flags or triggers which would allow them to cast me as the other. Ok… Fine. I’ll kill ’em with kindness. I was always careful to listen, always careful to apologize for how others felt as a result of what I said, and always careful to explain that while they may have taken offense, none was intended. With the staff, it worked like a charm. One even approached me after work one day and apologized for any subconscious prejudice they may have shown towards me. As someone who was gender-fluid and had experienced a great deal of bullying in his life (from people who probably looked a lot like me), I understood where his pain came from. I thanked him for stepping up and telling me something that clearly wasn’t easy, and then let him know that he had never been anything but kind to me. Maybe awkward cold shoulder here and there, but really, barely noticeable. We’ve gotten along quite well since then. I wish I could say the same for the founders.

The founders are in their 50s, married, and very representative of a far-left ideology. Had I not run into it myself, I may still be second-guessing if it existed in the way the right characterizes it. And this is from someone who would probably fall left of center if I had to be characterized. But because their ideology didn’t resonate with me, I was eventually told, “maybe you’re just not our people.” That was the end of July.

There’s more to the story than that, but I think the picture has been painted. Instead of abandoning the opportunity in front of us, I told them I’d take some time to do some soul searching and appreciated their patience. I wasn’t willing to abandon my common sense or integrity either, but I wanted to be open-minded in how I looked to move past this. I spent a few days away with some female friends, looking for some female insights. I did a few days at a horse ranch where went on my first mushroom trip. I spoke to mentors and advisers. And everything led me back to the notion that I was probably be quite reasonable, and was caught between a rock and a hard place. Compromise who I was for the sake of harmony in that work environment, or keep up the kill ’em with kindness approach, hoping they’d eventually come around.

The other unfortunate dynamic, or perhaps most unfortunate dynamic.. is that I was up against the founder’s dilemma. Essentially, entrepreneurs looking to build a big business eventually need to choose between efficiency and control. If your business is growing fast, there’s a good chance it’ll outgrow the skill sets of the founders within the first few years. That’s when the founders need to bring in new talent, delegate the responsibilities that others are better equipped to accomplish, and then settle into a role within the company that best fits them. Or if you prefer to retain control, you’ll avoid all of that to make sure nobody messes with your ‘baby’. I’ve run into the latter. Extremely frustrating for someone who was brought in for the eventual CEO role. They had conveniently forgotten that though.

Frustrating for sure, but not nearly as frustrating as what followed. They requested to stop weekly meetings. They stopped involving me in key decisions. In a lot of ways, they just stopped communicating. Yet I was still drawing a modest salary from them and trying to stay as busy as I could behind the scenes. Realistically though, I managed about 10 hours of work a week… probably could’ve been 3 if I had the need to streamline things. I was overcome with boredom… and not the fun kind.. but rather a lack of opportunity to apply myself. And man did that mess with me.

I could see so much that needed to be done and I was more than capable of taking on those responsibilities. But rather than making use of one of their best assets, they seemed to avoid me at all cost. The only reason I didn’t start looking for other opportunities is because I knew that we’d be establishing a board of directors shortly and that the board was likely to hire me as CEO. With that dynamic, I was optimistic we could all be successful and enjoy working with one another. I suppose it was an exercise in patience, but far from an easy one.

With respect to cannabis, there’s a quote that resonates deeply with me, “I’m not an addict, I’m a user. I alleviate boredom and occasionally heighten my thought processes.” That would be Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, one of my favorite fictional characters. When I’m functioning at full speed, I seem to have little interest in cannabis. It gets in the way of me getting things done at the level I want to do them at. But when I have nothing to do… it’s like I want to reduce my potential so it’s more in line with my output. Working 10 hours a week, that’s when I start smoking a lot of weed. It dulls the frustration of not having anything to do.. but it’s a slippery slope. At first it’s just an evening thing. But when you wake up with nothing on your schedule and shit-all to do… wake-and-bake seems like a pretty good option. By October, I was smoking about 4-5 joints a day.

And I suppose I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, it’s not like I was doing nothing. I was still doing BJJ, still doing yoga, still playing soccer, still consuming a ton of information, still studying the cultural and political climate, and still thinking deeply about the world and where it’s headed. But for me, it’s like frosting without the cake. These are all things I’d want to do in addition to a career. As a result of the perpetual fog caused by heavy cannabis use, I was disinterested in reading my books.. disinterested in writing.. disinterested in a lot of things that I think are quite important to me.

The truth is that I don’t know what the future holds for me at the moment. Last month, the biggest company in our entire industry approached us looking to buy us out. As expected, the founders didn’t mention me in the acquisition talks. Since I owned equity in the company, it was looking like I’d get paid-out somewhere between 6-7 figures and be on my way. While I’d prefer the CEO role in the business under the bigger company, I was happy to take the consolation prize. But then the acquisition fell apart… frustrating when I was never involved in the discussions. And now the investors are questioning the ability of the founders to run the company in a responsible manner. They’ve met among themselves over the last week and have decided that they’d like me to sit on the company’s board, have financial oversight, and engage with our investment banker to sell the company to someone else. That conversation should take place sometime this week. It’ll be very interesting to see how the founders react to that.

In the meantime, I don’t know what my role will look like with them. Nor do I know where I’m headed next. I connected with a friend who was also in the industry and we got about 90% of the way to working together.. but a municipal election went the wrong way and now we need a few more pieces to fall into place. If they do, I’m off to the races. If they don’t… it’s not a thing. I’ve already started on a consulting website for my space. Since it’s new, I’ll be among the first. Might work. But maybe I go check in with the recruiter I met in September who said he’d love to place me. But in all seriousness, I’ve been obsessing about something else.

A few years ago, I started writing a screen play. It started with the rise of Nixon 2.0 and was supposed to take place after 8 years of Hillary. The idea was that culture and politics tends to experience a pendulum effect. After 16 years of Obama and Hillary, we’d have something in the opposite direction. I abandoned the script after Trump was elected. I didn’t anticipate Russia or the electoral college. Since then, I’ve still been searching for an outlet for my ideas. This blog helps, but these are just daily thoughts that I’m looking to refine and articulate. I wanted something bigger.. a project I could sink my teeth into. I wanted to write a book.

This book has been on my mind for over a year now. I’m not ready to write it just yet, but I’m getting close. And I’m starting to obsess over it. I know this from having seen it in myself and others… a healthy obsession is usually a sign of something you should absolutely put your time towards. Lebron is obsessive about basketball, Crosby is obsessive about hockey, Buffett is obsessive about investments. This book is calling to me.

To get there, I need to accomplish a few things. I need to stop consuming that much cannabis. We’re now 5 days into sober November. My body needs to recover from the stress load it was under. I got a few supplements from the naturopath, cleaned up my diet, and am stepping up my physical routine. I need to get my mind back to the level of clarity where I can do my best work. I’m back on my brain training game, reading, and writing. Daily. But perhaps most of all, I think I need clarity on what my near future looks like because I don’t want to dive into this only to leave it on the shelf as my career takes me in another direction. For that, I suppose I’ll need a little more patience.

Universe… if you’re listening.. I got a hell of a book in my head that I’d like to put into the world. I think it’s going to do a lot of good. If you could make sure there’s a path available for me to get there, that would be greatly appreciated 🙂

Starbucks: Not Discussing the Complexity of Racism

Not long after it happened, a friend of mine posted the viral video of the two black guys getting arrested and taken out of Starbucks. I had a few initial thoughts.

That sucks.
This is going to trigger some serious outrage from the internet crowd.
I wonder what actually happened here..

As the story goes, two young black men entered into a Starbucks waiting to meet a friend. Without buying something first, one of them asks to use the washroom. A Starbucks employee says that washrooms are for customers only. Instead of making a purchase, the men simply grab a seat and wait for their friend to arrive. At this time an employee, possibly the manager asks the men to leave. They decline, saying that they’re waiting for a friend. Whether or not they said something to the effect of we’ll buy something when our friend arrives isn’t something I’ve been able to track down. After refusing to leave, the manager calls the police to remove them. The police arrive a short time after and ask the men to leave again. They decline again, saying that they’re waiting for a friend. After the police ask multiple times without success, they’re placed under arrest. As they’re being walked out, their friend (who happens to be a middle aged white guy) shows up and this is pretty much where the viral video starts.

There’s a lot to unpack here, and I can’t help but think that very few people are having a meaningful conversation about this. It’s becoming formulaic at this point. Minority is marginalized, video goes viral, internet produces outrage, company goes into damage control and *repeat*. This isn’t how we make progress. We have to make the effort to understand what really happened here if we want to avoid things like this happening in the future. I’ll make that effort here.

I’ve spent plenty of time in Starbucks and I don’t even drink coffee. When I used to work in finance, most meeting were coffee meetings and about half of them were at Starbucks. I’ve also studied the history and operations of Starbucks quite closely for a variety of reasons. Consider me a Starbucks pro. I have a thing about being punctual so if I’m doing a Starbucks meeting, there’s a good chance I’m there 5-10 minutes early. More often than not, I’ll grab my drink order when I arrive rather than waiting for the other person to avoid the perception of being a non-paying customer. That said, on more than a few occasions, I’ve waited for the other person to arrive before placing an order and have never been approached by the staff. I’ve also asked to use the washroom before making a purchase more than once and have never been told that it was for customers only. This is where we need to start asking why and being honest with the answers we find.

Most of the Starbucks I’ve been to were in the finance district or in nice neighborhoods, the areas without much crime and where Starbucks employees generally felt safe. I think that when you feel safe, you tend to care more about the well-being of others and are more likely to let things like this slide. The neighborhood that I grew up in was different. Washrooms at local gas stations or McDonalds would have special lights installed so that you couldn’t see your veins; preventing heroin addicts from using those washrooms for shooting up. Employees at these establishments were much more guarded in how and when they would allow washroom access. I don’t know Philadelphia that well, but looked up the crime rate in that area and it received an ‘F’.

Something else worth mentioning is that about a year ago, there was a robbery at a different Starbucks in Philadelphia. In the early afternoon, a man walked up to the register with a gun and told the 19 year old female Starbucks employee to empty the register. She quickly walked away from the register towards the back room and the man left shortly after. The security footage shows a black man in his 30s, wearing a black hoodie. Was this person the same person that refused to leave the Starbucks a few days ago? Definitely not. But I think it would be a mistake to assume that this incident has no relevance to what happened last week. I would guess that word of this robbery probably spread quickly through the Philadelphia Starbucks scene. I would also guess that there was some kind of message to those employees about following procedure around these things.

A year later, two black men, both dressed mostly in black and appearing to be in their mid-30s enter into a Starbucks in a rougher side of town. After declining to make a purchase and declining to leave, what should the Starbucks employee do? Follow procedure? Procedure likely suggests to call the police. The call to the police was simple,

“Hi, I have two gentleman in my cafe who are refusing to make a purchase and refusing to leave.”

The message from dispatch was also relatively simple, “We have a disturbance there, a group of males refusing to leave.”

When the police arrived, they calmly and politely asked the men several times to leave. It was only after refusing over and over that they were arrested.

Unless they’re withholding parts of the transcript, this wasn’t as much of a racial issue as it’s being made out to be. Mostly, this was an issue of two people refusing to make a purchase and refusing to leave. Mostly. There is an element of racism here which needs to be discussed.

I actually began writing this entry a couple days ago but wasn’t able to return to it until now. I’m happy I had that time as I was able to learn an important detail which hadn’t been mentioned in the dozen or so articles I read about this. The men entered the Starbucks at 4:35. The police were called at 4:37. 2 minutes? Really?? That smells heavily of prejudice. I’m having a hard time not jumping to the conclusion of racial prejudice… but for the sake of discussion, I’ll carry on.

The first question I ask myself in these situations is how would this played out had we swapped black for white? Two white men enter a Starbucks, refuse to make a purchase and refuse to leave. Police are called to enforce company policy and the law, and the two white men still refuse to leave. The two white men are arrested and removed from the premises. Would the internet have reacted the same way? Would we have considered this normal? If that’s the story I had heard, my first reaction would’ve been “why didn’t these dummies just make a purchase?” Because these gentlemen were black, we dare not say it.

My understanding of racism is not discriminating based on the color of someone’s skin. Instead you judge someone based on the merits of their actions and the contents of their soul – good or bad. I’m a big fan of Trevor Noah and he said something interesting about this situation, “I bet from now on, they’re going to be more careful when it comes to dealing with race. You know what, I was thinking what black people should do? I think we should see just how far we can push Starbucks now. Just to mess with them. Like, ya, now we go back after they’ve done the racial bias training and just use the bathroom but take all the toilet paper home with us. Ya, y’all have a problem with this? No? No? No? No? You don’t? I appreciate your sensitivity, ya I do.” He went on to give several entertaining examples of ‘how to mess with them’. The beauty of good comedy is that it communicates hard truths in ways that people don’t mind hearing them.

When I see incidents perceived as racially charged, I often ask if it’s strictly a skin color thing. I say this because I often wonder what has a greater impact on prejudice, skin color or dress code? How would things have played out had these gentlemen been wearing suits? How would it have played out if it was a couple of thugged out white guys with neck tattoos? What if it was a well dressed white guy and a thugged out black guy? What if it was a suited up black guy and a thugged out white guy? What if it was a couple of Latinos wearing exactly what these black guys were wearing? When does the color of your skin just become just one variable in your appearance?

Better understanding racism is something that’s very important to me. This past weekend, I took a friend of mine out for breakfast and we had a great conversation about this stuff. He’s Wesley Snipes black, originally from Somalia, but has spent most of his life living in major cities here. As he put it, nobody second guesses him when he’s wearing a suit. But once he goes out with a hoodie and fitted cap, people start making assumptions. The truth is, I could probably go out wearing the exact same hoodie and cap and people wouldn’t make the same assumptions about me. And there’s no way around it, that’s racism.

And after all that, I’ve now set the stage for what I think the real issue is: Tribalism.

I grew up tribal just like many of us, but my tribe wasn’t based on race, it was based on where we were from. We were from the hood. We were proud to be from the hood and dressed like it to make sure people knew. We wanted to carry the tribal markers of thugged out gangsters, making sure people knew that we were not to be taken lightly. Getting looks from old white people was a point of pride. Knowing that we had made them feel uneasy humored us. Especially because we were also raised with good morals and values. Despite the way we dressed, we weren’t the type to cause trouble. Ironically, we were much more the type to hold doors open for others and walk old ladies across the street. Maybe that’s why we got such a kick out of it. But how were the old white people supposed to know this when all they had to go on was the way we dressed?

This is where I think it’s important to discuss what I’ve started to call tribal markers. I had a conversation with a co-worker yesterday which I found to be illuminating and extremely impressive on their part. We’ll call this individual Taylor. Taylor has had a tough go of it, having been bullied excessively in school for being different and not having a strong support system at home to help rise above it. Now in his 20s, Taylor’s navigating his sexuality with what seems to be a lack of clarity and certainty. From what I understand, Taylor’s not quite sure where he falls on the spectrum of gender or even which gender he’s attracted to. He’s exploring those dynamics and I truly admire it. Around me, Taylor’s always been fairly soft spoken, and very kind. At times, I would even notice him going out of his way to be nice to me. Picking up on some subtleties in body language and how he interacts with me, I could tell that Taylor was struggling with something around me. I had some ideas as to what it was, but didn’t focus on it since he had always made a clear effort for things to be positive between us. Yesterday, he apologized for being weird around me. He told me he was dealing with a lot of misplaced hate as a result of being bullied when he was younger. With most of that bullying coming from straight white males, Taylor learned to identify them as the enemy, and that had unintentionally extended to myself. He apologized because as he put it, in a way, that was a form of racism. I thanked him for bringing this up, complemented the courage it took for him to do it, and told him I genuinely admired his weirdness. It was my most honest answer and I’m very grateful to have had that conversation.

For the record, I tried to write this without using the word ‘he’ or ‘his’ and it’s just not how the English language is built at the moment. I’m not big on compelled speech or having to memorize 50 new pronouns, but I certainly see the value in introducing a single non-gendered pronoun. Anyways, I’m pretty sure he’s identifying more with the male side of that gender spectrum right now so I don’t feel like a total ass. Carrying on..

I really appreciate the perspective Taylor shared with me because it helped me confirm part of my theory around tribalism and tribal markers. Growing up, Taylor was bullied, I assume predominantly by straight white males. As a result, Taylor saw a pattern that was worth being protected from. Of course not all straight white males were bullies , but if he perceived that all the people who bullied him were straight white males, where do you draw that between us and them? Here, he was faced with someone who carried all the tribal markers of someone who would harm him, but who has treated him with nothing but respect and appreciation. I can’t understate how much I appreciate him facing this the way he did. Not only does it show a tremendous amount of personal growth on his part, but it gave confidence to my strategy of just being a good person and waiting this kinda stuff out.

I’m familiar with what discrimination looks and feels like because I grew up as a minority. For the most part, that discrimination faded away in my teens and 20s. Now in my 30s, it’s back. This time, it’s because I’m a straight white male. Add the fact that I have a background in finance and drive an SUV, I seem to tick all the boxes for an oppressor. Yet I’m not oppressive… and in reality, I’m big on liberation. I’m big on exploring and embracing our weirdness, whatever that may be. I’m big on supporting others in their pursuit of happiness and do my best to bring positivity to the world on a daily basis. So why is it that in the age of open-mindedness, progressiveness, and acceptance, that so many are so quick to assume that I’m such a shitty person?

Tribalism.

Throughout history, when times get tough, people get tribal. The United States was probably never more united than they were during WWII. Times were tough, but they had a common enemy. My friend from Somalia said that as bad as racism is here, it’s nothing compared to the racism back in Africa. In Africa, almost everyone’s black but there are different kinds of black. As he put it, they’re super close with one another when they have a common enemy, but once they lose that common enemy, they go back to being racist towards each other. In many ways, times are even tougher today. But without an obvious enemy, we’re drawing lines in the sand for the sake of protecting ourselves from an enemy we can’t identify. The rich vs. the poor. Men vs. Women. LGBTQ+ vs. Cysgendered. Religious vs. Atheist. Black vs. White. Liberal vs. Conservative. Democrat vs. Republican. Left vs. Right. Seriously…. when we get to the point of drawing the line between left and right, especially without any real or consistent definition of what left or right is, we need to take a second to think about what we’re doing to ourselves. We’re picking a team and turning the others into our enemies in the pursuit of emotional safety, but in the process, we’re tearing ourselves apart.

When every major media outlet has that video of the black guys getting arrested at the Starbucks set to auto-play as soon as you visit the site, of course the video goes viral. And when you don’t include the context of all the things that led up to it, of course people will assume that it was an act of egregious racism. And when the internet outrage machine goes into maximum overdrive, of course Starbucks will overreact in hopes that their overreaction is more significant than the public’s overreaction and that this somehow puts everything back in balance. This is all craziness, and doesn’t provide a solution to the problem, only more hostility towards a situation which people don’t seem to want to invest the time into understanding.

Those two black men had every right to be the color they are and wear what they wanted to wear. Starbucks had every right to enforce a policy of asking someone to leave if they weren’t willing to make a purchase. The police had every right to ask them to leave and to remove them when they wouldn’t. And those two black men had every right to choose this as a moment to make a stand. What happened here is rich in details and things that we should be having real conversations about – but we’re not. I wish we were..

Had I been in the shoes of the manager, I would’ve let them use the washroom and probably would’ve let them hang out even if their friend never arrived. Had I been the black guys, I would’ve bought a coffee. If I was the dispatch, I would’ve asked for more details and had I been told that they weren’t being violent, I would’ve suggested waiting a few more minutes before sending anyone over. If I was the police, I probably would’ve bought them a coffee and hung out with them until their friend arrived. But I’m not one to follow policy when it doesn’t make sense. I’m one to try and understand the situation for what it is and act like an intelligent and compassionate human being.

… but that’s just me.

Is Fashion an Exercise in Prejudice?

The majority of my clothing budget for the last 5 years was spent on suits. For the banking industry, it’s a uniform. You show up in in a nice suit, well put together, and people assume you’re on top of your game. If you show up in something less, people start to ask what happened. It’s almost like wearing your resume.

I always liked my suits. They were all tailored so they were among my most comfortable clothes. They had a lot of personal detail like lining, monograms, etc. It was also easy to come up with a bit of style, almost like the suit was a template where you just had to pick a few colors that went together. For the first time in my life, people actually thought I had style.

So I left banking in January and now I work in the cannabis sector. I don’t really wear my suits anymore. I look for excuses to wear them here and there, and still suit up for big meetings with old colleagues, but the suit now carries baggage with it. In banking, the suit was an exercise in putting your best foot forward. In cannabis, the suit seems to represent the establishment, corporate greed, and a lack of liberal values. Ironically, I’ve been dealing with far more prejudice in this environment than I ever did in the ‘corporate’ world.

The Cannabis industry seems to be filled with entrepreneurs and employees who hold a great deal of distrust for ‘business people’. The suit is the uniform of such people. If you see someone in a suit, it’s best to assume they’re a threat. Lovely.

All good, I’m adaptable. I started to break out the jeans, sweaters and t shirts that hadn’t seen much action over the last decade and made an effort to be a little more casual. Casual wasn’t necessarily more comfortable, but it seemed to fit the environment and I really didn’t mind it. Eventually, one of the founders started poking fun at my style of casual clothes (probably rightfully so), and suggested that we do a shopping trip in the near future where she would introduce me to some modern fashion.

That was last week. I basically let her lead the way through the shopping district and tried on everything that she put in front of me. For her, the focus was on making me appear ‘softer’. I don’t mind soft.. Lions, tigers and bears are plenty soft.

Pretty quick, I was told no V-neck shirts. I didn’t bother asking why because I’ve heard that V-necks are for douche bags at least a few times. I didn’t know that douche bags were so geometrically inclined but was annoyed that they apparently ruined the 6 V-neck t-shirts I had at home. Personally, I don’t understand why the V-neck or U-neck would hold any relevance, so I decided it was best to go with the flow.

Next came pants. I grew up wearing baggy jeans, and it was awesome. There was plenty of room to move around, they were comfortable, room to put stuff in your pockets, and they would still fit if you grew a bit. Around 2010, I remember going shopping at the local hip hop store for another pair and finding out that they were now only selling skinny jeans. I was told this was the new style, and ended up buying a pair. I literally wore those jeans less than 5 times until I dropped them off at the salvation army 5 years later. The tapered leg looked a bit silly with my shoes at the time, but it was mostly an issue with comfort and function. I have a big bum and big thighs to begin with, but squeezing into these made me look and feel like a sausage. Things wouldn’t fit in my pockets and everything got super-tight in all the wrong places when I sat down. As you can imagine, I was not looking forward to pants shopping in 2017.

Most of what I tried on looked like spandex and was not comfortable. For me being able to move around and sit down without discomfort seems like a reasonable prerequisite for buying clothes. If they fit well when you’re standing like a manikin but start to burst at the seems when you sit down – they don’t fit. I had some resistance on this claim from the fashionista, but I stood my ground. One of my comments was that the pants were so tight than I wouldn’t be able to put anything in my pockets (keys, wallet, cellphone). She said that’s why I needed to start carrying a man purse.

Let me get this straight… I’m supposed to sacrifice functionality, comfort, range of motion, and money, to buy clothing which is more in-line with today’s expectations of how people should be expressing themselves through fashion.

Isn’t fashion supposed to be self-expression? If my brand of self expression was classic, timeless, functional, and comfortable, shouldn’t I be steering clear of skinny jeans? Or do I start wearing the uniform of the socially acceptable? As a kid, I remember seeing everyone wearing wide-leg jeans and casting prejudice on people who wanted to wear skinny jeans. With the cyclical nature of fashion, now the dynamic is apparently reversed. With that knowledge, there’s no way I can buy into the dynamic of one being right and one being wrong.

By the end the trip, I bought 3 pairs of pants. 2 will have to be altered to fit my over-sized legs and bum. The other may never see the light of day, although I’ll concede that they’re quite comfortable.

Whether you’re wearing a suit or dress, khakis or ripped jeans, wing-tips or flip flops, we all need to get better at judging people on who they are. There is absolutely creativity, artistry, and personal expression in deciding how you dress, but replacing your clothes on a frequent and ongoing basis to conform to fashion standards set by others is downright silly. Almost as silly as assuming that someone who wears a suit is a corporate douche bag, or assuming that someone who rocking dreadlocks is a lazy stoner.

If I were to redesign the fashion industry, everything would be done to custom measurements. We all come in different shapes and sizes, most people do not fit ‘off-the-rack’. Then we would have fabric designers. People who create the different prints and fabrics of the world because that’s what they love to do. Then we have the clothing architects who build the blueprints of the clothes we want to wear. Then we would have the option for custom details that make those items truly unique. Finally, manufacturing would take place where ever it made economic sense. We should be closing in on the fully automated manufacturing of clothing within the next decade so picking up a few items of clothing at your local shop should be a non-issue sooner than later.

If we could decentralize the design and manufacturing of clothing, then it would no longer be major designers and retails looking to set fashion trends and rotate them for the sake of new inventory. It would be the designers of the world, and the people who identify with their designs. With greater decentralization comes a more transparent view of what the world’s fashion really looks like. With a clearer perspective, comes a greater understanding and with a greater understanding, there’s less room for prejudice.

Once we get there, I may invest in a clothing line. I’ll call it something pragmatic… like Function. These clothes would be designed by an algorithm that considered:

Custom measurements for sizing
range of motion for the cut
climate and intended use for fabric
Personal requests around functionality for things like zippers and pocket

The algorithm would take all these details into consideration, and then produce a piece of clothing with all the required specifications, with the least amount of fabric, at the lowest cost. Each piece would theoretically come with a perfect fit, unrivaled comfort, made with the most strategic fabric, and designed with the functionality of the wearer in mind. The clothing would also be made for the lowest cost possible, with the least amount of fabric possible – leading to great value and an efficient sense of style.

Pretty sure it’s all going to look like spandex eventually.