the new yorker and other bullshit
smoking_robot
346 Posts
There's a piece on that 8 year old style "guru" tavi gevinson in the new yorker.
Undeserved fame (as defined through its existence in the manifestations of Paris Hilton etc) boil all our collective blood. But often overlooked is undeserved praise for an entire family of fucktards (i use big words because im smart).
This is a rant.
I await the onion article that lambastes the faux artistry and faux intelligentsia we call the fashion industry at large. Yes, many execeptions to this category exist so put down your pens quick witted readers with itchy reply fingers. I would write and submit one myself but i dont work for free. However it may or may not involve an emporer's new clothes/post-modern twist on a fall lookbook which at first curates a collective shock and outrage before finally culminating and consummating into praise when a few stubborn contrarians decide to support said nonsense and with everyone else not wanting to look like the fool, we arrive at our status quo of worship once again.
I feel its reasonable to conclude that the fashion sayers of do and dont are simply a judging panel of the arbitrary. There is no real underlying aesthetic at work. It is a sham. A game. A lie. But it makes so much goddamned money that we cannot let it die. Where would our upper crust rest their clubbed feet if not in the finest of suede and italian leather? Where would our holier than thou go if it is not busy judging the sweat pants wearers or the airbrushed t-shirters?
I would be al iar if i said "i dont care about style." But.
I would not consider myself a hipocrite to conclude there is a vast majority of bullshittery and fakery afoot within this snow globe. Insert a shakespeare quote here that ends with the word Denmark.
Is anyone else bothered or perturbed by this?
She's fucking 13 years old. Nothing against her, but i dont buy this hype and feel deceived when its bought. I will pay respect when she's actually lived a little. By 13, i was still a fan of some stupid shit. I dont buy into aesthetically principled wunderkind.
Please know, this is written with much exageration of emotion and truth for effect and i will not be held 100% to each and every word read here. That said, please argue with this point if you want to. I wont really defend it. But i wouldnt have written it if i didnt want some kind dialogue to ensue. Im sure someone has an opinion to the opposite that wants to express it. Tell me why im wrong.
Excerpt from New Yorker
Style Rookie Blog
Undeserved fame (as defined through its existence in the manifestations of Paris Hilton etc) boil all our collective blood. But often overlooked is undeserved praise for an entire family of fucktards (i use big words because im smart).
This is a rant.
I await the onion article that lambastes the faux artistry and faux intelligentsia we call the fashion industry at large. Yes, many execeptions to this category exist so put down your pens quick witted readers with itchy reply fingers. I would write and submit one myself but i dont work for free. However it may or may not involve an emporer's new clothes/post-modern twist on a fall lookbook which at first curates a collective shock and outrage before finally culminating and consummating into praise when a few stubborn contrarians decide to support said nonsense and with everyone else not wanting to look like the fool, we arrive at our status quo of worship once again.
I feel its reasonable to conclude that the fashion sayers of do and dont are simply a judging panel of the arbitrary. There is no real underlying aesthetic at work. It is a sham. A game. A lie. But it makes so much goddamned money that we cannot let it die. Where would our upper crust rest their clubbed feet if not in the finest of suede and italian leather? Where would our holier than thou go if it is not busy judging the sweat pants wearers or the airbrushed t-shirters?
I would be al iar if i said "i dont care about style." But.
I would not consider myself a hipocrite to conclude there is a vast majority of bullshittery and fakery afoot within this snow globe. Insert a shakespeare quote here that ends with the word Denmark.
Is anyone else bothered or perturbed by this?
She's fucking 13 years old. Nothing against her, but i dont buy this hype and feel deceived when its bought. I will pay respect when she's actually lived a little. By 13, i was still a fan of some stupid shit. I dont buy into aesthetically principled wunderkind.
Please know, this is written with much exageration of emotion and truth for effect and i will not be held 100% to each and every word read here. That said, please argue with this point if you want to. I wont really defend it. But i wouldnt have written it if i didnt want some kind dialogue to ensue. Im sure someone has an opinion to the opposite that wants to express it. Tell me why im wrong.
Excerpt from New Yorker
Style Rookie Blog
Comments
how do you get good at selective indifference?
damn. i gotta get my hands on that. did sfj do the article?
robot: by the sounds of it you'd be into this doc which is a couple years old now:
wow, that looks really interesting to watch. i'll definitely be checking it out. thanks for the recommendation. its spot on.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_wilkinson
it's behind a pay wall, pm if you want i'll copy the text and send it to you
she just happens to be the gateway drug to the anger. its not so much her, but she's an easy point to jump from. ya'll just get the short form because i lost steam by the end of the rant and didnt care to continue.
it's hard to figure out what you are saying/what you are made about, because you don't give clear examples. do you have an example for your "no real underlying aesthetic" argument? do yo have a particular designer/look/style in mind?
also, with the kid, i'm of two minds. on one hand, i worry about how a 14-year-old will react to the pressure that comes with being put in the spotlight. it doesn't seem terribly different from child-star pressures, and we've seen how those turn out. i hope she has a good head on her shoulders and i hope that her parents recognize/are willing to deal with the problems that will likely come with the attention/backlash/etc. if i were in a similar situation, and my kid had a similar opportunity, i would be leery about putting her out there in the spotlight.
also, if when i was thirteen powell peralta came to me and said it wanted to sponsor me, take me on the road, etc, i would have jumped at the opportunity, and my parents, knowing what skateboarding meant to me and knowing how further developing my skills made me feel, probably would have let me go for it. of course, because my body/strength/balance/etc. were still developing at the time, i would not have been the greatest skater, and would not have been able to compete with older pros, but i would have been in a competitive/focused situation that would allow me to develop my skills more quickly, and, most likely, to a higher level in later years.
this girl has the chance to do the same thing, and of course it comes with some risks, and as far as that goes, read what i said about here and her parents above.
this is a really good point actually. i am definitely inclined towards your argument here. i never thought of it from that point of view, probably symbolic of my own self-centeredness.
maybe its the lack of clarity as you suggested in your post, but i think im more angered at the response than the catalyst. (the people praising vs. the originator of the ideas).
i guess in vacuum, let the girl live right? but it makes me think we're all willingly taking part in some complex lie when we gloss over the fact or merely stand by and do nothing when encountering the reactions.
why sweat pants and airbrushed t-shirts? i didnt really sit and explore for good examples so i simply chose examples of shit anyone can point to and say "that's some shit." perhaps i should have spent the moment to come up with better ones. i wanted to highlight the extreme opposite to contrast from even the mediocrity of acceptable.