Ask any serious sportsman and he’ll tell you the same thing – they hate posers. Yeah, sure, they like to wear the fashions that identify them as being into a particular sport, but they don’t get obsessed about it. There’s something really wrong with people who do.

Different niche sports have their own brands and styles they like to wear. A brown boot is just a brown colored boot unless it has a brand name and style that distinguishes it as a ski boot or a football boot. Savvy footwear companies make casual shoes as wear as footwear for athletes because they know that a snowboarder, for instance, will want to wear their brand on and off the slopes.

Ditto for watches. Surfers and sailors need to wear waterproof watches and they like ones that look good. They don’t, however, wear the watch just because it looks good. What use would a leather watch be to a surfer when he’s being hit over the head by a giant wave!

A surfer likes to wear a men’s sport watch from a surf label, but real surfers don’t buy the leather ones as well. Those are for the posers who don’t actually get their feet wet. They judge posers very harshly, so if you want to be accepted by surfers, be sure you don’t get labeled as a wannabe pretender!

There is a deeper issue behind the surfers’ prejudice against going overboard with fashion. Surfers, real surfers anyway, don’t feel like they need to show off to the world that they are surfers. It’s part of their being. That’s why others look up to them and try to emulate them.

Those who think they’ll be part of the surfing subculture just because they wear the same brand labels surfers wear are missing the point entirely. Surfing is about practice and effort, not about looking cool. They’ll just laugh at you or worse if you think they’re going to accept you just because you wear the same clothes they do.

Everybody likes to look good, so if you like those sporty watches and shoes, go ahead and buy them. Just be careful, though and don’t tackle the waves unless you’re prepared to learn how to surf!