Shawn L. Bird

Do you know the phrase, “You can dress them up, but you can’t take them out?”

I watch What Not to Wear with fascination.  Every week someone is transformed from a slob into a fashion plate.  We’re introduced to these amazing people with horrendous style.  They spend a week learning what to wear, how to style their hair and wear make-up and then they appear in a mirror.  Their shoulders come back.  They walk with confidence.  They find their inner beauty.  Their exterior now manifests their amazing interior.

I wonder how hard they have to work to find people for that show, because you know that there are a lot of people out there, who despite the best efforts of the fashion stylists, will always be slobs.  There will be no inner beauty to find in them.  Sometimes you recognize them: the plastic, soul-less ones who may show air-brushed magazine perfection to the world, but it’s meaningless.  Nothing good can come of their physical attractiveness, because they are cruel and hollow inside.   They may manipulate and abuse people to get what they want.  People may even worship at their beautiful feet, but it’s never going to turn out well. 

One wishes for transformations that are more than physical.  Transformations that reflect the inner wisdom, consideration,  and intelligence, not intensify superficial superiority.   You can dress them up, but they’ll never be better than the shallow, ugly people they really are inside. 

Class is something that develops early on.  If you are still enjoying barf, fart racist and sexist jokes in middle age, you never developed it, and you’re not going to.  Trash always shows itself eventually, the garbage smell leaks out the polished shoes.

Class is something that can’t be created in a make-over.