Last Saturday I was sitting in a cafe, reading a book, when a person addressed me. She asked me if I it was absolutely necessary for me to be barefooted in a place where people are eating. I said:”Probably not.” She then proceeded to ask me to sit further away (I did) so she could eat. After that she left to get her supper while making the kinds of sounds appalled people do.
I was naturally taken a-back for causing such disharmony. I don’t particularly feel I’ve done something wrong being barefooted in a place where people eat, although I admit it might have stretched the limits of acceptable appearance. This caused me to think if there were any similar hung-ups I might myself have i.e. being upset enough for someone else for violating a (possibly outdated) social norm that I would say it out loud.
I found at least one such instance. I find myself strangely appalled by people (mostly women) for wearing those big sunglasses that make you look like a fly. Part of my dislike is not having sufficient kind of (eye-)contact with such people, often even the eyebrows are covered. Now, there’s an objective element here. As a cyclist, part of my survival tactic is to know when someone else has noticed me. If they don’t appeared to (whether they have for real or not) I have to react myself. That’s passing the responsibility to somebody else. It happens much too often anyways.
If I’d run into an acquaintance and having a conversation with them while they had those kinds of glasses on I’d have no choice but to exclaim my dislike for the violation of giving-proper-human-feedback -principle by staring at their tits.