A Dream About Social Mores

This dream was about a place where the world was divided into to distinct sets of mores.

I was at some kind a school or college, in a room that seemed like a large classroom recycled into a social gathering place. The room was more-or-less square, with no decorations on the walls. The only furniture was large number of chairs and small tables, like in a cafe. The room was large and fairly full of students hanging out, talking, eating, singly or in groups. The room had one window, it was near the far end, away from the door, in the left wall. This had two mirrored walls, the wall with the door and the one directly opposite it.

The important thing about this room was that there was a strip, about five feet wide, that ran from one mirrored wall to the other, parallel to the non-mirrored walls. This stripe was on the floor, ceiling, and on the mirrors. It was noticeably darker than the rest of the room, even where it crossed the mirrors. The thing about the strip was that there were different social mores for people within the stripe, than for those outside the stripe. This was something that I “knew” ran throughout the society. In every place in this world, there were stripes where you were, allowed or required, to behave differently. I was a visitor there, so I wasn’t really sure what the rules were.

So, in the dream, I was moving around the room, in revealing clothes, and watching for the people's reactions. I wanted to see what the boundaries were, inside and outside of the strip. I was having trouble finding out what the differences were, between the stripe and normal, because people were ether ignoring me or were too polite to react.

This dream might have been prompted by an fashion article I read last night, that now I can’t find. Here’s another about the same show Rick Owens Sends Pantless Models & Exposed Penises Down The Runway. It was about how women regularly expose virtually every part of the bodies on the runways of high-fashion shows without comment, but when a designer exposed even a glimpse of a man’s penis caused shock and giggles. I don’t know why that particular article stuck in my mind and caused a dream when there are plenty of other places that we all see every day where reality and common sense take a backseat to silly, arbitrary rules. Politics being a prime example.