> Also, it confused me when a few years ago someone told me that you shouldn't wear white shoes during the winter. I still don't understand this.

Me neither. I wonder if whoever came up with that rule realizes he is dumb and superficial enough to be impossible to parody through hyperbole.

Fashion is shallow and stupid enough as it is, but I *can* understand and respect those who appreciate clothing as kind of like a hobby -- kind of like how motorscooters or playing cards or rocks or keychains can be a hobby instead of something purely functional -- who therefore treat fashion trends as a fads, interesting new things to get excited about and enjoy wearing or seeing worn. But once fashion fads start dictating what people *can't* wear, worse yet when these dictations are so arbitrary, well, frankly I cannot think of *any* practiced element of society that is more disgustingly petty and trifling.

I didn't intend my previous post, that El Salvador thing, to be satirical in any way, but I suppose in retrospect it could work that way (although, just so we're clear, I don't think anybody who has contributed to this thread warrants having satirical reprimands directed at them). Anybody who actually believes wearing white in the winter is some shameful cardinal sin needs to be slapped very hard, then thrown into a poor enough lifestyle, lived by billions today, where fashion is such an over-the-top luxury as to be beyond comprehension. Maybe then they'll learn what things make sense to be concerned about and what things do not.

I don't think we all need to give away all our possessions just because other people don't have any. Fifty pairs of shoes isn't bad. Luxury is not bad. But given that luxury *is* beyond the realm of comprehension for many, I believe it's reprehensible for poverty to be beyond the realm of comprehension for those in luxury. The more outlandish rules of fashion, the ones that seem to have little or no basis in aesthetics or progress, and especially the ones that demand blind conformance to arbitrary standards under penalty of shunning, scream of this kind of ignorance.