What percentage of people in polo shirts actually play polo? There's even a little image of a man on a horse swinging a polo stick or mallet or whatever it is. It's right there on the shirt. But you have never played that sport. You've never watched that sport. You don't care about that sport and you're wearing that shirt. Why?
The world has weird people in it. They think they're normal because they're all being weird together. And they'd say I'm weird for asking these questions. Like if I met them at a bbq or something. A bunch of non-polo players in polo shits with a picture of a man playing polo on the shirt would say I'm the weird one.
Anyway, just putting on my wetsuit to go to the grocery store. No idea why people think I'm into scuba diving.
Aspirational Status
Polo is a rich man's sport to this day and ralph was simply applying marketing 101 way back when. Visual emotional signifiers > functionality in many respects in impacting the human brain
You can call it shallow and pathetic from a logical point of view, and you'd be completely right, but at the same time such behaviour is embedded in just about every aspect of the animal kingdom ,peacock feathers, male lion beards colour/size signifying alpha, the list is endless ie external symbols and features signifying mating desirability. In humans, for men $/status is top 3 easy. So in a fucked up way ,it literally goes to the core of the continuation of our species, for better or (likely) worse
