Rockyavelli

The purpose of this post is not to go over the ethical failures of the series that effectively undermine any moral lessons earned from reading. I could talk about Harry going from freeing slaves to owning one. Or I could talk about the way she treats every single female character and punishing them in the narrative and her word choice for daring to be openly feminine.

And I’m sure we’re all familiar with the biggest world building problem she created for herself. If I wanted to I could go in detail about how she breaks her own rules about the capabilities of magic constantly, and how by breaking those rules so consistently she makes the themes of poverty in the story completely obsolete, which I might do one day but today is not that day.

But the thing I wanna nitpick today is this:

There should be no reason that the adult which is in wizards are incapable of dressing like muggles.

Excusing the fact that J. K. Rowling herself puts the wizard population very low compared to the Muggle population and theoretically wizards are completely surrounded by muggles all of the time and should know how they dress, because fine I guess we can reason that the wizard community is isolated enough that they don’t come into contact with muggles every single day. Wizards do have to at LEAST see muggles every time they enter magical places from the streets of London like the leaky cauldron, platform 9 3/4, st. Mungos, or even the damn ministry of magic.

Because it really only takes a loose idea of what people wear to come up with a general outfit that is not offensive and non-distracting. The fact that the older wizards put on shit like a poncho or a nightgown to try and blend in makes no sense. When would they have ever seen a poncho enough to think is what Muggles wear casually? 99% of the Muggles that they would see would be wearing a basic combination of jeans or trousers with some kind of basic shirt, you can get so freaky within that realm and still pull off looking like a Muggle. It’s not rocket science. AND wizards wear pajamas, you’d be surprised how often they mentioned in the books so anytime a wizard wears those outside to impersonate a Muggle they’re just stupid, they know what they are and when they’re supposed to be used.

And maybe we have to assume that some wizards are just so disconnected with muggles society that they really just don’t get it. But then why the fuck does Mr. Weasley have a problem with it? His whole career is about interaction with Muggles. Muggles are basically his autistic special interest, HE SHOULD KNOW.

And the strangest part is that this misunderstanding of muggle attire just isn’t a problem that the younger generation of wizards have. Harry and Hermione obviously were raised in the muggle world, but none of the Weasley children are ever described, having any issues with dressings themselves appropriately to be around muggles, and J. K. Rowling writes multiple instances of the group of kids putting on their Muggle clothing to travel to Kings Cross or the other places listed above throughout the books. We find out in the sixth book that Fred and George have been going into the muggle to flirt with the girl at the post office, seemingly with no problem with how they’re dressed. Bill’s clothing when it’s described in the fourth book honestly sounds more like Muggle clothing than wizard. It almost seems like any character under the age of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley just know how Muggles’s dress.

And this difference in understanding is never addressed in the books! Not even in a joking, way where Ginny gets to call her mother old-fashioned or something for only wearing wizard clothes, Ron doesn’t have a moment where he put something on that makes Harry and Hermione laugh, it’s just not addressed why the kids get it and the adult adults don’t.