I’ve been officially trying for years not to care about Fashion because it is expensive and involves starving girls. But Tavi Gevinson, Style Rookie has just ended all of my objections with her good writing and her hungry little eyes. I read The New Yorker profile and was then sort of horrified to find myself on her blog looking up all her back posts. She’s a 14 year old from a house with grey siding near Chicago with non-fancy parents who somehow lives and breathes Comme des Garçons.
Unwelcome voices have been singing in my head all week, sort of like this: “This kid is safe from consumerism within an insanely consumerist context.” Is that really possible? “Within a space of pure desire, the yuckiness of the marketplace falls away.” Wait a minute, that’s ridiculous! Am I really thinking this stuff? Yep.
I’m going to requote Tavi’s 100th blog post, as I read it in The New Yorker:
“In my opinion, the most interesting fashion is the Anti-Fashion. No rules, no restrictions, no normalcy, no pleasing anyone…I might be less attracted to the entire ‘chic’ deal because, as a younger person, I do gravitate more towards tackier clothes. That being said, I’m twelve! I have no one to impress and I’m not concerned about wearing something flattering to my body. I will dress as ugly and as crazy as I want as long as I’m still young enough to get away with it. Suckerssss.”
I know that it’s terrible what has happened to art in our culture, how despite best efforts of several generations of artists, everything an artist makes or does or thinks about is still for sale, so of course the gallery system is corrupt, MFAs are a racket, and every trustee of a supposedly cool museum is just there propping up the value of their art collection. But I don’t want to think about that stuff. I want to think about beautiful, insane paintings and dinosaur boots. I might be one more Style Rookie post away from draining the last drop of Quaker/Protestant aesthetic guilt out of my veins. Then I’m going to go make absolutely whatever kind of painting I want.
John Cage & The PedEgg
I heard something recently that I still can’t believe I heard. A lot of people are very upset about their feet, and I have proof. I was in Walgreens with my son, I think we were buying diapers. We were walking through the aisle that has all the AS SEEN ON TV stuff in it. This section is one of the uglier things I have ever seen. There is a lot of text-heavy bubble packaging and flapping coupon dispensers. It’s messy. There were two friendly ladies with clipboards standing in front of the display and poking at a product called PedEgg. I was sort of watching them wondering who they worked for since they seemed less rushed than regular Walgreens employees and one of the ladies said, “Can you believe this is the best selling item in Walgreens?” “Really?” I said, “Just in the infomercial section or in the whole store?” “The whole store!” The lady said, and she laughed and scribbled something on her clipboard. The PedEgg is a little cheese grater for the bottom of your feet. This object is optional, it’s not toothpaste or hydrogen peroxide, or one of the more useful things you can get at a drug store. Instead, it’s what we Walgreens customers are most likely to have in common. Horror of feet. People are buying it though, all together. So this information is a little bit upsetting, but it’s something that I’ve been able to live with. Until last night, I started thinking about it again.
I was reading last week’s New Yorker. Alex Ross has a piece on the life of John Cage, apropos of a new biography coming out. Ross explains that the thing that finally got Cage out of “elegant” poverty in the late 50′s was not music but wild mushrooms. This was well after his reputation as an artist was established. He started making money hunting mushrooms for the Four Seasons and other restaurants, but he really hit the jackpot when he was was invited on an Italian game show and asked a lot of questions about mushrooms. He won eight thousand dollars.
I don’t know why, but this little culture story represents some kind of final straw for me. We hear a lot about the fairness or unfairness of “the market”. I’ve been staying up late discussing the “value” of an MFA with a friend who has just embarked on getting one. I even caught myself discussing with my husband the “value” of having a lot of facetime with our son, since I don’t have a full-time job. It makes us unhappy to put a sticker price on the things we think are really important, and it should – but sometimes we sort of have to do it anyway. However, I have a new idea. If the career of a major composer was supported by game show money and mushroom hunting, and also adult humans buy more PedEggs than any other single product when they visit a Walgreens store, the market might be reasonably viewed as absurd. I like this much better. Up is down, down is up. Of course what is important doesn’t sell! Who cares! Of course, I care a lot, since I have a kid to feed – but I am hoping that I can ride the cheery wave of “THE MARKET IS ABSURD” for a little bit longer. It helps.