In tepid defense of "fashion"

-Hello from the great outside world, namely the closest big city by train, where I ran errands and ate a burrito as per usual, and am biding some time before more NYU, again, just to shake things up. I also bought a neon-yellow t-shirt at American Apparel, to partially satisfy an unmeetable wanty (Kei, your term remains useful as ever), and was reminded that clothes-shopping is not so great actually. Fine, maybe it's especially not-great at the establishment I chose (chosen on the basis of, where else sells t-shirts in fluorescent shades?), which requires an ID for the credit-card purchase of a t-shirt, and where there are gratuitous pictures of butts on the wall.

But even under the best of circumstances, blech. The dressing room, the taking off and putting on and taking off and putting on of layers, does anyone enjoy this? If I "like shopping," it's that I like walking around a busy area, and those tend to be commercial areas, and I do enjoy some window-shopping, occasionally walking quickly through a store, etc. Actually shopping for clothes, with intent to purchase, is tedious. And there's not much point in doing so in person, now that there are no stores unique to specific locales, and everything can be purchased (and returned) online. I will remind myself of this the next time I express anything less than full enthusiasm for living in the woods.

-Refinery29 does its fashiony best and pleads with college women to stop the North Face, Uggs, and (evidently - what happened to Vera Bradley and Hervé Chapelier?) Longchamp combo. Fine. But this! "A college wardrobe must be classic — funds are limited, so long-lasting pieces reign supreme for a smart shopper."

One bit of that statement only - the "funds are limited" one - I agree with. But if you're not going to experiment with dress (or, wear weird stuff) in college, when else? You're not going to an office, your choices can't be (as easily) vetoed by your parents, and you're more likely to still be the build that wacky clothes are designed for. You can dye your hair and paint your nails however you'd like. You couldn't before, and soon, you once again won't be able to. You may or may not one day have a job in the corporate law environment whose strict dress code PG sometimes pops in to describe, but you probably will have responsibilities - to a family, to a demanding poodle - and fun trips to H&M will stop being such a central part of your existence.

And whatever you may think, however fast your metabolism, you will be fatter when you're older than you were at 19, so remember especially to steer clear of any "investment pieces" with a waistband.

-Hadley Freeman of Ask Hadley fame responds to a man who wants to know, no offense or anything, what the point of fashion is. And here, readers, we have an example of a cousin of the Mansplanation. Dude does not want Freeman to explain fashion to him. He is telling her, in the form of a question, that he thinks it's dumb to care about fashion. Nothing she can possibly come up with will convince him otherwise.

Freeman's response is the classic and WWPD-approved sports comparison. Scrapped of nuance, said argument goes: men, you like this dull thing called "sports," so you have no place telling us that we're silly for finding shoes compelling. I've tried this, to limited success. Because one aspect of fashion - a rather large aspect of it, if we're using "fashion" to mean "high fashion" and not using the term to also encompass "style," "street fashion," and "self-expression-through-dress," as colloquially everyone does - involves the rich and thin showing off for one another and being judgey, "fashion" gets a bad reputation. Think - again, regular readers - of how Quinn on "Daria" is part of the "Fashion Club," which isn't about avant-garde Antwerp designers or creative arrangement of thrift-store finds so much as being a small dress size at the snootiest store at the mall. Think Anna Wintour. Someone with no body fat and a limitless bank account is laughing at you behind your back. To care about clothes beyond neatness and appropriateness is to sympathize with the bullies. Meanwhile, "fashion" is as hated as it is largely because it's a world/concern associated with the feminine, with women and gay men. Hmm.