In the Temple of the Automatic Markdown

[cathyj]

On the way home from Chinatown, I stopped in Filene's Basement. Sometimes I feel I'm living a Bloomsian nightmare of belatedness (I'm bullshitting you, I've never read any Harold Bloom), in which I perpetually move to towns five years too late. Shortly after I got to Austin, the Bazaar became Finagle a Bagel; not long after my arrival in Boston,

Comments

[mistersmearcase]

I have long been fascinated by your interest in fashion. It made me reconsider my sort of mean notions about the kind of people that are interested in fashion. I think if I were rich, I'd dress nicely too, though certainly not couture, which is for another kind of man. Even this year, with a paltry income, my fashion sense, once non-existant, has been upgraded to feeble.

[cathyj]

To be honest, I've felt kind of hopeless about fashion for a while-what with getting fatter and everything. But really, working with a Frenchwoman has a profound effect on one. I'm not kidding.

Prada has lots of nice ready-to-wear for men, hein?

[anonymous]

I think the demonization of fashion in this country, especially as applies to the left and radical culture in general, in some ways goes back to the stoic pragmatism that many of the founding fathers connected to revolution, which was further catalyzed by the transcendentalists. Material culture which doesn't serve a pragmatic end is dismissed as superfluous and relegated to the unsavory side of the class-war binary. Concern for aesthetics is equated with superficiality. The same is true of the yuppie/metrosexual fusion of late--I think this is a good paradigm to illustrate the difference. The "yuppie" values the status-granting properties of aesthetics: we like French food because it is expensive, as opposed to the "metrosexual" who values aesthetics for aesthetics' sake: we like French food because it tastes better/ is presented in a more sophisticated manner than Outback Steakhouse. Your yuppie did not know how to dress, really, they just bought whatever is most expensive. Though in alot of ways the metrosexual is the

[cathyj]

Whoa, Mark the P.! I am awed. Well, it's interesting, because I'm really uncomfortable with consumerism-I can't even pick a tube of toothpaste from the overwhelming display of toothpaste at Shaw's without getting upset. Yet I love fashion, which is impossible to disentwine (er, or something) from status, and can easily tip over into hopeless "I'll never be that kind of girl" (or man as Mr. Smearcase says) thinking. I guess I feel I can do an end run around those connections by going to Filene's Basement.

The metrosexual as "demonized form" is also interesting. If I considered him a demonization, it would probably be as a defense against the redefinition of masculinity. Because now it's not just queers who are putting forth a different way of being a man, but straight men too. So maybe the anti-elite elite you refer to are frightened by that. I mean, you start letting gay men get married, next thing you know straight men will want to get married too, right? Or something.