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Fashion Someone who calls herself a 'Fashion Consultant' wrote an article in the local paper where she gave some fashion advice. Among the tips for the fashion conscious was that periodically you should purge your wardrobe. In other words, every so often you should throw out perfectly good clothes because they don't fit in with current notions of what to wear. And why should someone care about following fashion? The main reason is that people or, more usually in this instance, women are concerned about what other people think of them. This is linked to low self-esteem. They only feel good about themselves when other people look favourably on them. This goes further than simply appearance. There is fashion in ideas, attitudes, beliefs and morals. People who are concerned about what others think of their appearance are also concerned to say the right things, to toe the line. They are often, incidentally, the same people who talk about their independence. I've mentioned before ('How Children Bring up Their Parents (Continued)') about school uniforms and myth that wearing a school uniform somehow stifles individuality. Because in many cases parents have effectively abrogated responsibility for bringing up their children, they look for guidance from their peers and seek approval in what they wear and what they say. Being 'cool' can be very important. This doesn't go away as people get older. Women are particularly susceptible to seeking approval, especially when they lack self-esteem. It's sometimes said that the world is made up of two groups: the trendsetters and the trend-follows. I beg to differ. The trendsetters and the trend-follows have a lot in common - both groups are concerned with trends. People who are confident in themselves are not concerned with simply following what other people do, or, for that matter, in getting other people to follow them. On the other hand, caring about your appearance is not the same as following fashion. One of the reasons that people indulge in self-mutilation, piercing, tattooing etc, is that they often have low self-esteem. If you think little of what you look like then anything is an improvement and in any case, to use the vernacular, so what?