Why Put A Tuxedo On Your Variables

The top panel shows Pooh looking unimpressed with a public variable. The middle panel shows Fancy Pooh absolutely delighted with the exact same variable made private but wrapped in getter and setter methods. The bottom panel captures that moment when you join a project and see this pattern everywhere but can't figure out why anyone would add all this boilerplate just to access a simple variable. It's like putting on a tuxedo to walk to your mailbox.