Don't Hate

I read this article the other day from the Guardian, basically about how much the author hates fashion. If you give it a quick scan, this post might be more interesting. Of course, I disagree with almost everything she says. I am totally sympathetic to people who don't care about fashion, think it's silly, don't follow it, don't feel it has a place in their lives. That's fine and understandable. But this woman really hates fashion and I found myself wondering why she gives it so much power over her. She's a journalist, so hopefully fairly intelligent; she's in her mid-thirties; she presumably has a life. But she seems to be so tormented by fashion, so manipulated by it, so haunted by it's negative effect on her life, that she's filled with hate. I mean, get over it. It's just clothes. Sure, she thinks that there is a great soul-crushing corporate machine that exists only to separate women from their money by making them feel so insecure and desperate that they file miserably into mall to buy slutty, dangerous shoes and mini-skirts. I don't deny that there is less-than-savory marketing and negative images of women in fashion, but aren't most of us smart enough to take what we like and leave the rest?

One of her points is that fashion is for vapid, bimbo drones who aren't even smart enough to realize how miserable they are. Smart women don't like fashion, and there is no creative, artistic, intelligent fashion. You can't have fun with fashion, or use it to explore your individuality. Because it is killing your soul, and you are too dumb to know it. We should all be like her, smart but consumed with hatred, knowing that if you let your guard down for even a moment, and say, enjoyed what you wore, you would be sucked into an anorexic vortex of destruction.

The more I though about the article, the less I cared about the parts of it that pissed me off. I was really left wondering how a person gets to that point of being so bitter and upset about something that most of us find frivolous and fun. I thought it was us fashion slaves that were supposed to be the insecure ones... Having read many of the hundreds of comments on the article, I did get the impression that regular readers of her column are treated to a litany of the things she hates, so I guess I'd rather be my brainwashed self than her enlightened self.