Fashion is Stupid - by John

John is one of my favourite bloggers in myspace. The guy has amazing insight on so many issues, and recently he wrote on something that has been a bug to me since I can ever remember: Fashion. Here's what he had to say about it, and I agree!

October 10, 2007 - Wednesday

Fashion is Stupid Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping Last night, I was watching America's Next Top Model with Jen, and I was distracted from really getting into it because I was trying to think my way to the heart of what it is that bothered me about the show. Every time I watch the show, which is pretty often, since my wife loves it, I get this uneasy feeling that's pretty close to anger. Obviously, fashion is another word for mindless conformity, but that much is obvious on the surface level. What I've realized is that I don't think the fashion world should even exist. These are women who look nothing like any woman you're ever going to encounter in everyday life, though granted, beautifully so. They are wearing clothes no normal human being would ever wear. In fact I've done some math. There might be 100,000 people in the world who have enough money to wear clothing like the clothes these women model. If half of those people are women, we're down to 50,000. Let's use a nice round number and say there are three hundred million people living in America, where the show airs. That comes out to one person out of every six thousand that can even afford to spend $15,000 on a dress, whether or not they'd be inclined to. And that's in the wealthiest country in the world. Then you have to wonder, out of that select group, how many of them are the right height and weight for these outfits? If one out of five of them are, and that's generous, we're now talking about one person out of every thirty thousand. So high fashion is clothing for 1 out of 30,000. That kind of shoots down the idea that these people are trying to sell clothing. Target and Wal Mart make ten thousand times more money from clothing sales than Versace does. So what the hell are they selling? Or maybe a better question is, what the hell are they doing? What IS the fashion world all about? I think it's about commodifying an unattainable image that's attractive to people specifically because it's not attainable. It's an escape from the drudgery of being normal and living a normal life. I think most women flip through these silly magazines for the same reason people buy lottery tickets. It's an excuse to have a fantasy. So now I know why the show makes me angry. It's because it's a show that glorifies a brutal and worthless industry. An industry that puts children in third world countries to work and makes its money by convincing normal people that they're too poor, too short, and too fat. It's an impressive con, I'll give them that.