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fine with me...
As a art graduate I got to know other students that were in the fashion design department, this is effective marketing, this is how someone with an idea gets to make MONEY ON IT.
Of course, success attracts enemies. The clothes themselves, well... taste is a matter that is subjective. I like some of their stuff, some of it not so much, but somebody is going to like anything... and it's not like if I see a shirt in a men's clothing store when I shop that I think is hideous that I presume that nobody else would want to wear it... or that the person who'd like it has something to be ashamed of. It seems to be the height of egoism to postulate that your tastes are "tasteful" and that those whose tastes diverge are either campy and cheap, or ostentatious and too decadent.
Don't you know, people's tastes are a reflection of them, and that if you run around insulting people's tastes you insult them as well.
I know, I know. But they're capitalists... their advertizing... we make our own clothes. Fine, make your own clothes. But this is the hipster bullcrap you guys put your bands through that when they are obscure and totally broke you feed your egos that you know of them and that when they become known by everyone and successful they aren't cool anymore just because people know them. Yeah, same thing with fashion, so many are always looking for that ballence to be the one on the bleeding edge with the look and styles that everyone will acknowledge as cool but yet nobody would really know at the same time... something rare... something that makes them say "oh, wow, they're so hip and knowledgable about every cool thing to wear and listen to that regular people don't know about, lets kiss their ass and declare them the epitome of taste and everyone else hopelessly uncool."
You know, I actually have more respect for the people who object to the outfits on moral grounds, not that I agree with them, but at least they're not coming from a position that's shallow. I see too many just making blanket generalizations "Well, I don't like raver wear, ravers, rave culture" fine, so what are you, preppie, goth, emo, geek culture, hip-hop? What about when people make blanket statements about your subculture?
As for the model controversey. Um, why don't we just right up a law forcing naturally thin women into burquas or fat-suits so that no one has to see anything that might motivate them to anhorexia and bulemia. I'm in a college town, there are young women all over t he place and at that age MANY of them look like those models figure-wise. Who are they marketing to, what age demographic? Not thirty somethings... like they're going to go to a warehouse bash? So do you think that if every magazine and ad censored itself that there wouldn't among women aged 16-25 skinny ones that get a lot of the attention anyway that have their more matronly figured best friends eating yogurt and running on a treadmill trying to compete? Nope. People advertize what SELLS. To think that "thin" models are the only kind of beauty out there would be a stupid assumption, but anyone shallow enough to be that easily propegandized wouldn't be that much deeper minus the propeganda. Thin is merely a symptom, of youth mostly, and if thin models sell clothes to women of all figures it's probably because it conveys to the buyer a feeling from a time when they were that thin, love was new and mysterious, they felt the full power of their beauty coming into womenhood... and eliciting feelings and emotional associations like that with a product tends to sell product.
Anyway, anhorexia doesn't necessarily solely come as a product of advertizing or men wanting thin women... it comes from deep stuff, some psychiatric drugs prove it to be somewhat biochemical, it comes with OCD much of the time, odd rituals, sometimes a peter pan syndrome where they are trying to stop the biological clock of puberty or reverse it. There is a severely distorted body image where arms that look like bones in sweatsocks look to the person like bloated sausages. There was anhorexia and bulemia even back in days when thin was out, back in days when hollywood liked curves it was going on. It's probably been going on for a very long time, just these were days when people talked about it. To blame thin people for it, or advertizers, when it's obviously a psychiatric disorder that doesn't require thin to be in to effect people... it's simplifying a complex problem and passing the blame onto advertizers for the fact that we have disgustingly poor mental and nutritional health care in this country.
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Bruecke Bautraeger
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posted 12/20/07
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