The Original What not to Wear

There is a show on TV where a pair of fashion specialists are called in to help someone with their fashion fopaws. The friends of that person, that the fashion specialists are there to help, are the ones that contact the show.  These friends are often tired of the person’s wardrobe and therefore think that a change is in order.  If the person accepts they are taken to New York where after they are given some fashion advise they are given money to change their wardrobe.   Once this is done, the person is brought home for the grand reveal in front of all their family and the friends.  Everyone is so excited about the new look.  I bet the producers of this show thought they had an original idea when they developed this concept, but I think that the Original What not to Wear was Joseph and the coat of many colors.

Joseph was favored by his father Jacob and Jacob made Joseph an ornate coat of many colors.  All of his brothers hated Joseph and his coat because it represented their father’s love for him above all the other brothers.  Joseph also made the mistake of telling his brothers about two dreams he had in which he stated that he would rise above his brothers and that they would all bow down to him. This only angered them more and since there were no fashion experts around to help them get rid of the coat of many colors they plotted to kill Joseph.  One day when the brothers were out with the flocks and Joseph was sent to find them, they saw their chance.  Joseph came up to them and they stripped him of his coat, beat him and threw him in a cistern. Reuben the oldest brother talked them into not killing their brother and instead they sold him to a caravan headed to Egypt. 

We can only imagine what it must have been like to have Joseph prancing around the house in his coat.  He probably wore it day and night only taking it off to bath, if that.  This would only have enraged his brothers more.  There is almost always some sort of sibling rivalry when a family consists of more than one child.  Parents are sometimes blinded by the excitement they get when they give one of their children something.  Maybe Jacob didn’t realize what it looked like when he gave Joseph the coat.  Or maybe he did and actually had given him many other things along the way that brought on the extreme resentment.  I am sure Joseph had a “nah nah a boo boo, I got a coat and you didn’t” attitude.  Talk about instigating a fight with your bothers.  On top of that he added his visions in his dreams about his brothers bowing to him. He is very lucky that Reuben had some sense when all the other brothers were seeing red.    

 In the present day version of What Not to Wear, the reason the person is on the show is because their clothes shouldn’t be worn at all,  they lack a sense of style and fashion.  Sometimes it’s because they wear the same clothes over and over again and they are worn, tattered, and holey but not in a good way.  The person lacks a sense of fashion and their friends are tired of looking at them in their clothes.  Their friends get so fed up with their lack of style that they call in professionals to take care of the problem.  Joseph’s brothers had other reasons why they hated his coat, so they didn’t want the fashion police.  They wanted the coat gone and wanted to hurt Joseph so that is just what they did!   Reuben might have been willing to call the fashion experts if they had been able to not only help with the coat but Joseph attitude as well.  Alas there weren’t fashion experts and the idea of the show had to wait till present day.  I don’t think the pilot episode of What Not to Wear would of floated with people if the outcome would have been what happened to Joseph.  Do you?