Unwrinkled Convention.

As I was folding laundry today, a statement that would astonish my parents, I thought upon a topic that as been with me throughout most of my life, what is wrong with wrinkled clothing. Cloth wrinkles unless you put effort into preventing it. Society has determined that wrinkled clothes "Look bad." Your clothing will look bad if you don't put effort into preventing it. But why do wrinkled clothes look bad? There isn't anything inherently ugly about wrinkles in clothes. We have no problems with pleats, which are simply rigidly ordered wrinkles. We have no problem with lines and shapes of all sorts of colors, of textures acros the spectrum from shiny man-made fibers to fuzzy woolen knots.
The reason why non-wrinkled clothes "Look good" is because it is a measure of your willingness to conform. Since it takes time and effort to clean, fold, iron clothes and the only purpose in doing so is to look good enough in the eyes of others, then all it amounts to is a public display of your willingness to do unnecessary things to fit in. The same goes for mowing the lawn, wearing ties or high heels, washing the car, painting your house, and a whole myriad of things we do WITHOUT THINKING WHY. Unless you are trying to get laid, why should what your hair looks like matter?

In victorian times it was considered attractive in England for women to have skin so pale that you could see the blue veins within the skin. In the 1970's it was considered attractive to have skin darkened by the skin to the maximum amount. Why was this? It was because in victorian times people made their living outside, they got dirty and sweaty and burnt by the sun if they had to make a living. But the wealthy could hide indoors all day, or walk around under parasols. It was harder to be pale than tanned, and it demonstrated wealth and power to be pale. In the 1970's women were beginning to have a large proportion of indoor jobs, juggling careers and children and housework, working all the time indoors. Therefore it was a more difficult proposition to lie around outside on sunny days for long enough to get burnt by the sun, hence it was considered more attractive.

Think how much time and effort you would save if it didn't matter what you wore, how it looked, what your house looked like, whether your car was clean, what your garden looked like, etc. other than how you actualy wanted it. Is that five hours a week for you? Do you spend five hours a week demonstrating your willingness to conform? I might.