Beneficio de la formalización de los predios rurales

Compared to other types, INTPs have a low interest in clothes and other matters pertaining to the care of the physical body. They also tend to be blissfully ignorant of social norms. This may manifest itself in various ways:

• Wearing the same set of clothing for many days in a row

• Wearing more or less identical clothing every day, varying only in minor details or color⁸²

• Wearing unattractive, out of style, strange, wrinkly, worn out, smelly, stained, torn, ill-fitting or mismatched clothing

• Wearing clothing that is easy to put on/take off and emphasizes mainly comfort and utility

• Long and/or unkempt hair

• Long and/or unkempt fingernails

• A funny smell caused by an overall lack of hygienic effort

• Lack of makeup, jewelry, or hair styling (for female INTPs)

• Unshaven body hair in any location where it would be culturally appropriate to shave

INTP Fashion Statements

Most INTPs don’t really notice clothing or hygiene, and they assume that others don’t either. For this reason, INTPs make all kinds of interesting fashion statements. A top hat they wear to school every day. Mismatching shoes. Einstein explained it by saying, "Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."

Let’s look at some examples of high INTP style.

Albert Einstein

Einstein is notable mainly for his contribution to INTP hair fashion. He just let it do its own thing, and tada--instant image branding. Young male INTPs will also wear their hair crazily, though for them it just looks messy and careless.

Male INTPs may also disregard hair styling completely and simply let it grow out; in fact, the stereotypical image of the computer guru with a long ponytail or braid is probably derived from this INTP habit.

I worked at a company with a short-haired INTP coworker who went to the barber as infrequently as possible and was rather shaggy as a result. (I myself sported the long ponytail look, and was therefore considered highly fashionable.)

There was a big government audit, and the company went on a cleaning frenzy. They shampooed the carpets and people were ordered to clean their offices. Part of the clean up included my INTP

coworker. He received an anonymous envelope with twenty dollars in it and instructions to have his hair cut. A true Perceiver, he said triumphantly, “Aha, see, waiting until the last minute pays off!”

Thomas Jefferson

INTPs must have had it hard in the old days, when a good set of clothing was considerably more elaborate than it is now. Imagine how much time and effort must have been put into the suits worn by the founding fathers. And in those days, you could not merely pluck an item off the rack--it had to be tailored for you, meaning an appointment to take your measurements.

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Jefferson’s style of dress sometimes got him teased by the other gentlemen. For instance, he tended to follow the approach of wearing the same style of clothing over and over with minor variations. George Ticknor remarked upon Jefferson's “setness, for instance, in wearing very sharp toed shoes, corduroy small-clothes, and red plush waistcoat, which have been laughed at till he might perhaps wisely have dismissed them.”

Though Jefferson’s dress had pearl buttons and gold lace, it was just not fashionable. His clothing was often out of date with the style of the time. As his grandson remembered,

“His dress was simple, and adapted to his ideas of neatness and comfort. He paid little attention to fashion, wearing whatever he liked best, and sometimes blending the fashions of several different periods. He wore long waistcoats, when the mode was for very short; white cambric stocks fastened behind with a buckle, when cravats were universal. He adopted the Pantaloon very late in life, because he found it more comfortable and convenient, and cut off his queue for the same reasons. He made no change except for motives of the same kind, and did nothing to be in conformity with the fashion of the day. He considered such independence as the privilege of his age...”

Webster wrote, “His whole dress is neglected, but not slovenly.”

And then there was the whole matter of the wig. Abigail Adams noted, “His hair too is an other

affliction which he is tempted to cut off. He expects not to live above a Dozen years & he shall lose one of those in hair dressing.”

Aren’t you glad you don’t have to fuss with fake hair? I have reflected that if I were to get rid of my long hair, the next most convenient thing would be to get a buzz cut.

Of course, Jefferson's lack of etiquette got him into trouble sometimes. As President, he scandalized the British minister by appearing “not merely in undress, but actually standing in slippers down at the heels, and both pantaloons, coat, and underclothes indicative of utter slovenliness and indifference to appearances, and in a state of negligence actually studied.”

James Madison

President Madison's body servant recalled, “He was very neat, but never extravagant, in his clothes.

He always dressed wholly in black--coat, breeches, and silk stockings, with buckles in his shoes and breeches. He never had but one suit at a time.”

Here we have an example of an INTP monocolor scheme, black. People would note that Madison seemed to be always ready for a funeral. One observer wrote, “He was clothed so soberly that he looked more like a dissenting divine than the heir of a planter of large estate...” Even the ribbon he tied up his hair with was black.

Like Jefferson, Madison would adopt a style and stay frozen on it unless a more comfortable or workable opportunity presented itself: “His style of dress was never altered: plain black cloth coat and knee-breeches with buckles, the hair powdered and worn in a queue behind; the daily task of dressing it devolved upon his wife, who would not think his body-servant capable of doing it justice.”

Now you know another quality to look for in a spouse.

Albert Speer

Speer, the German armaments minister during WWII, was required to wear the Nazi party uniform as

part of his work. But whenever possible he avoided it, preferring instead his civilian clothing.⁸³ A friend described his early appearance by noting, “I remember him...as rumpled from head to foot: His shirt had an indefinable color, his tie—if he wore one—was knotted very loosely, his trousers dangled and had horizontal instead of vertical stripes.” The same friend even drew a cartoon caricature of Speer.⁸⁴

The Author

This INTP follows the pattern of having just one style of clothing with minor variations. At my last job, I had to wear “business casual.” My style consisted of long sleeved shirts: a white one, an orange one, a blue one, a light blue one with snowflakes, an olive green one, a pine green one, and a purple one. I thus had seven shirts for four days of the week (Friday was casual), and since I washed them and rotated them appropriately, I didn't have to buy more for a long time.

Clothing, Hooray.

It is considered normal for males of all types to be disinterested in shopping. However, among INTPs, the female of the species may also find the process dull. Throughout my adolescence I found shopping for clothes every bit as boring as shopping for car parts. In fact, till my mid-twenties I never bought clothing at all; I simply wore whatever I received on holidays. (Which wasn’t much; as a child I cried when I opened up a present and found that it contained clothes. After that people showed better taste.) My ESTJ mom bought whatever else she decided I needed, thus ensuring that I would not go around looking like a “homeless person.”

On an amusing side note, my mom was always asking how this or that item of clothing looked on her or if her hair was right. My naive response was always, “Oh, it looks fine” or “Don’t worry, no one will notice.” Actually, only INTPs don’t notice. Everyone else does. When trying to dress up for that interview, be paranoid--don’t assume you’ll get away with this or that little faux paus. The other types are watching, and for some inexplicable reason they really do care.

Of course, during adolescence it can be hard to bond with other girls on the subject of clothing:

“Squee! Look at these awesome jeans I got at Old Navy!” (“Oh, uh nice.”) Lack of interest in clothing is yet one more factor that sets INTP females apart from their peers at a young age.

When I was finally forced to buy a business casual wardrobe of my own (around age 25) I cringed at the expense, the hassle of trying on dozens of unfitting items, and the waste of time accrued by the manufacturers’ unintuitive sizing labels, which I had to research on the internet to figure out.

Naturally not all INTPs are this oblivious to clothing. I suppose I shouldn’t pity them.

The Smell

Many a hygiene-oblivious INTP gets told at some point or another, “Wear deodorant” or “Shower more often.” What to do?

For office workers, the best solution to this problem is to get a scented candle and keep it burning continually. Your coworkers won’t be able to smell you through the cloud of Vanilla Essence. And as a bonus, you can even fall on the floor and pretend you’re being attacked by the honey-smelling gas creature that Captain Kirk was so obsessed with killing in the original Star Trek. (Don’t do this in front

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of nonINTP-coworkers; they won’t get it.)

Or you could actually shower and wear deodorant. That might work too.

Hot Beauty Secrets for Female INTPs

Did you know that the same techniques that lead to unattractiveness in INTP males lead to

attractiveness in INTP females? It’s true! Now you can take advantage of your natural disinterest in your appearance to outshine all your acquaintances.

Can’t be bothered to go to the barber? Let your hair grow out. As you ignore it, you will find that it grows and grows. The reason other women can’t get long hair is that they’re always fussing with it:

“I’ll just take off a bit to get rid of the split ends.” They curl it, tweak it, bake it, trim it, straighten it, wash it, and cover it with chemical sprays, torturing their hair follicles to an early demise. Leave your hair to its own devices and watch how long it gets.

How about those fingernails? By simply ignoring your fingers, you can have wonderfully long, elegant nails. Don’t bother trimming them unless they’re cracking off--which won’t be often, provided you avoid too-frequent showers. Overly frequent showers harm your hair and cause your fingernails to become brittle and rigid, and you will develop unattractive ridges down the middle. Ugh.

The moral? Let nature take care of itself, and you’ll soon have gorgeous nails and hair. When that interview comes, you can brush out your locks, paint your fingernails and look stunning. Just as if you had planned it.

Prudishness

Do INTPs tend to dress prudishly? Keirsey (1998a) suggested that Rationals are the most prudish temperament, although he did not specifically apply the descriptor to clothing. But are Rationals actually prudish? Thorne and Gough (1991) found that ENTPs and ENTJs are particularly unlikely to be described as prudish by observers. (This finding did not hold true for INTPs or INTJs, who were neither likely nor unlikely to be described as prudish--i.e. observers did not strongly notice anything in this regard.)

So we are left wondering:

1. Are INTs actually nonprudish and people simply didn’t notice it?

2. Are INTs just middle-of-the-road in terms of their prudishness?

3. Are INTs so private and reticent about their personal lives that it seems like prudishness in certain ways but not in others?

I bet you thought I had the answer, didn’t you? Alas, no. But at least we’ve exchanged incorrect certainly for correct mystery--that’s progress, right?

We can conclude decisively then: we do not know if INTPs dress more prudishly than average.