If all of your modes of self-expression through style were taken away--clothes, home, car--how would people learn about you? Through your actions? Your hobbies? Your idiosyncrasies? What sort of information would they collect? How would they know your favorite color is green and that you like west coast jazz? Would it matter whether or not they knew? Maybe they would know you by your family or your church or your clubs. Maybe you would be part of a whole. Would that bother you?
If you lived in a slum in Nairobi and your entire worldly possessions consisted of two shirts, a skirt, a broken comb, and a battered water jug would you feel a greater or lesser need for self-expression? Would people think of you as the woman who liked to sing or the man who was clever with his hands? If parts of you remained unexplored due to lack of opportunity, does that mean you would never make to Maslow's famed self-actualization? Never be wholly you? Never able to be known by yourself or others?
What do you want to say about yourself to the world? How do you want to be known?
