First Impressions

During my schooling years, I learnt proverbs, one of which was "Don't judge a book by it's cover". I thought that it was fair enough and was willing to give everything a fair go. I tried to look beneath the face value and lift the veil to see what was behind.

Fast forward a large number of years and unfortunately, it seems like either I have changed dramatically or the world has changed, but it seems that first impressions do count. They count for a lot more than I imagined. Hmm, perhaps that should be put down to my naivety. In all honesty, there are many instances where first impressions are undeniably important - even though we are taught not to judge a book by it's cover, I think it is something which is inbuilt into all of us. I'm sure that at one stage or another all of us have passed a fleeting judgement on a first impression - whether it be that stranger who decided to strike up a conversation, looking for property or looking at people on the street - in some form or other, judgments based on first impressions are a fact of life. In fact, most of the people in my survery (albeit a relatively small sample size) have remembered their first impressions of the people they went out with. From the, "I hated the shirt he was wearing" to the "He looked depressed", that fleeting moment of first impressions could have gone either way.

In fact I have found that it is common to be in situations where there is a limited amount of time to give a first impression. It could be in an interview, or meeting new people; work or social context. Given the choice, I'm sure most people would choose to give a good impression than a bad one.

Therefore undeniably, first impressions and "covers on books" matter quite a fair bit in our society, as much as many would dispute that point. Therefore, given that humans are inherently judging creatures, it would make sense to make sure that one makes a good impression when it is us who are being judged by others. Heck that makes all of us that little bit more self conscious, especially if being judged with our partners. I know I would be conscious about being labelled an "odd couple".

So with the proliferation of female magazines and fashion stores, it is quite a bit easer for females to find the goods listed in them. One of the major problems when shopping with girls is that 90% of the stores cater for females more than males. Secondly, if there is a "Mens Section" it is usually confined to a single rack for the entire store. Such a blatant disrespect fo the male ability to spend leaves me in utter bewilderment. As males embrace being more metro, the rate of growth of male targetted goods has not really grown in proportion to meet the market. Thankfully I found a new website called Mens Flair. It provides a lot of useful tips and hints. It may not be very good, but until there is more competition, I guess I will have to settle for this in the meantime.

Anyway, time for me toperform my pre-sleep routine....