It was God who made me so beautiful. If I weren’t, then I’d be a
teacher.
Linda Evangelista, Supermodel
Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire
to seem rather than to be.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin, Author
It's hard to live in our breathtaking civilization without noticing the amount of faces looking back at you from every billboard, screen, and magazine cover. They all have something in common. They are reflections of perfection. Large level eyes, symmetrical face, high cheekbones and a small nose. Perfection that is skin deep, but that's as deep as our eyes can see. Except of course Superman and I think Dr. Doom.
Many terrible things have been done for beauty and the human physical ideal. Many more terrible things will be. We indulge our lust for beauty and make it into a philosophy, one without any moral compass. And so I intend to protest it. I will be the stick in the mud that casts stones at it. I am a metaphor that is mixing like a blender.
But I am actually one of them and I lied before when I said I wasn't. I can only see skin deep. Sometimes even when I look at myself.
Actually though, I believe our fixation with beauty isn't entirely deranged. There is obviously some reason to it. If you cast a shadow and are under the age of 75 you probably care what you look like, and that particular fact may not be more bad than good. Like alcohol and strychnine it is probably alright in controlled doses.
But in my own experience the people I have met who were the most absorbed with fashion were also the most half-witted and bipolar. Some are trying to look like images they see in the magazines, some actually look like the images in the magazines, but they are all on the same track which only goes one direction.
I have spoken to beautiful women so who were so empty it felt like some kind of paradox. The paradox is that despite their emptiness I still wanted their attention. But that didn't really last.
There is something changing in our civilization, or more it is a notion that is growing larger and larger beneath our unexamined desire for beauty at any expense. The notion is that beauty is self justifying. Becoming more beautiful is a good enough reason to do anything. No one really would think twice about whether or not that is actually an objective improvement.
There is a term in use now, metrosexual. A metrosexual man is a man that goes to salons, attends to his skin and cuticles, wears designer clothes and appears to be a male model. The metrosexual is a narcissist and his purpose is exhibitionism. He loves himself and he is in love with himself.
The metrosexual man is everywhere. There are magazines for every part of him. Fitness, fashion, and music. Magazines like Maxim carry on a laughable charade where they pretend to be about masculinity but are packed with ads for clothes and cologne. The point they are making is that you need to realize you're the center of the universe and start acting like it. But you're only the center as long as everyone else knows it. However there are some things about these magazines that on the surface seem inconsistent with what I just said. These magazines often have articles about how to give women orgasms, which you might think is encouraging attending to someone other than yourself. But what they are really about is learning to produce orgasms at will since those will be another example of your magnificence.
I had a membership at a fitness place downtown where I would swim as a way to curb the damage I like to do to my health on a regular basis. In the locker room there were many metrosexuals. Men with frosted hair and waxed bodies sculpted like calvin klein models. You would think they were gay but they weren't.
They would stand in the mirror and admire their toned triceps, lats, abdomnenonals and all the other shit I couldn't name with a chart. Of course I see nothing wrong with what they have done with their physical health, but it appears that something has happened to their mind. While they stand in the mirror admiring their masterpiece I get the feeling should human geometry permit it they might like nothing better than to penetrate themselves with their own awesome erection and bestow on themselves the sex of a lifetime.
But since that is impossible they have to settle for some sufficient reflection of their beauty they find in an equivalently attractive female counterpart.
These self adoring jocks who spend as much time on their appearance per day as I do per week are participating in a beauty arms race that seems to have the potential to escalate infinitely. I can't compete, or more truthfully, I can't win. I have no choice but to compete. That was probably how it started with them as well. They came to the conclusion that if you need to compete you might as well shoot for first place. And so what begins as a grudging acceptance of a shallow society becomes bent into foppish dandyism.
These men once seemed laughable to me, but I am laughable to them. With my stupid haircut and out of date style I am about as cool as Huey Lewis.
And I don't know if you've noticed this, but style tends to beat substance every single time. And this goes for more than just the way people look and dress. Trends don't end with just clothes. Trends are rarely very deep. We don't have the time and energy to look very deep. This is well known to the media, politicians, your parents and anyone trying to persuade you of anything. They know you look at the surface, so they put things there that they want you to see.
What lies beneath it is the subtle, tangled mess of truths and relationships that we take for granted mostly so we can ignore them. And so those things are invisible, despite the fact that it is precisely those invisible things that exert the most influence on your life. We hand over control of our civilization to those people who operate in the perplexing depths of politics, media, and fashion.
Occasionally rare and ambitious men and women come along who break into what lies beneath, usually to wreck it and rebuild it for their purposes. Like the top of an iceberg we only see their public image, which may cause no great disturbance while it glides neatly alongside us, while it tears open the side of our cruise liner. And even as we watch the water rise we can't help but be impressed with their fearlessness and marvel at the scale of their accomplishment.
One way or another, fashion reminds us we aren't in control. Is this bad? It depends on how you feel about control. Would you rather focus on the window dressing? Would you prefer to repaint the monoliths? Judging by my own actions I guess I would. A lot of the time I get tired just trying to control my own life.