Oomis: I understand how you feel about being judged for the way you dress, and I am definitely on a lesser level of dress in tzniut than you are (you wrote you wear long skirt, sleeves, snood…in your other post), yet I think differently about “yeshivish” people’s dressing habits.
I will actually respect the guy in the black hat…not because I feel that he is more religious than me (because I am very spiritual myself and I know a lot of halachot) but because he is trying to preserve his religious state of mind in the way he dresses. Maybe I’m just assuming it is so, and probably there are many that dress a certain way just because they want to fit into a specific group, but don’t you think it would be easier for the guy to remove his hat and say “I’m too hot to wear this!”
I think that the fact that a Yeshiva guy is willing to dress in a way that he feels is proper, is actually admirable and not troubling.
True, what you say about people being surprised about you knowing Halachic things (though the way you describe your dress sounds yeshivish to me). I have a really religious friend who was shocked when I told her that I had to send my dress to be checked for Shatnez. But I have learned that the way we portray ourselves is the way that others will see us. It’s easy to say “Don’t judge me by the way I dress”, but the way we dress DOES say about the person that we are. I have finally learned this and come to term with this fact.