Perplexity

I've been hitting people up with the telling hypothetical: 'of the good, the bad & the ugly' which one would you sleep with?

Unfortunately most telling about it is that most people I've asked have no idea what I'm talking about.

A friend who did made the absolutely 100% valid critique of the epic film as 'too masculine' as in '100% masculine' and yes, the whole western genre is patriarchal bordering on misogenistic.

Kind of like the hip-hop industry, albeit that is more misogenistic bordering on patriarchal.

Anyway, the point is that I need to freely acknowledge that a different generation is producing/consuming cool now, my ship has sailed. I don't want to join the club and the club won't have me.

I am joining the proud tradition of model citizens that look upon the problems with the youth today.

Although it isn't really a problem, I am just perplexed.

Like today I was thinking about David Bowie, I have to confront David Bowie soon, but an old flame introduced me to David Bowie, and because I wanted to make out with her, I gave David Bowie a chance.

See much of my life I spent hating the 80's, and one has to admit that the 80's can be best described as 'excess' but better described as 'craptacular'. It's funny though I used to hate the 80's until Bowie showed me that good shit got done in the 80's and I used to love the 90's until hipsters helped me understand why most people hate it.

There is much I don't understand about fashion trends and it's seeming trajectory. Here is just some of those points of perplexedness:

1. Ironic facial hair - what is the irony? that it is so unstylish it becomes stylish again? or because such a visual icon of masculinity is worn by some of the least masculine homo sapiens to carry a Y-chromosome? Does anyone have the answer?

2. Women who feel nostalgia for Madmen - Sure someway, somehow the women's movement was brought to heel to the extent that their are social repercussions for any woman with lhabia enough to proclaim herself a feminist, or even comment to the effect that something is sexist, but Madmen is alarmingly popular amongst women or those who would be visibly mistaken for women. Alarm because they seem fond of, pining for, a past where their jobs were meaningless, the marriage contract heavily assymetrical against them, the need to medicate yourself to allieviate the bordom of day to day living pervasive and sexual harrassment virtually unchecked. And the pay-off? pretty dresses. Madmen is perhaps the single most significant influencer of the past half decades fashions. The irony being that it is set in the 60's following the conservative set that the first generation of teenagers rebelled against. And now the current generation of teenagers idolize the establishment.
What the fuck happened?

3. Skinny guys - In the 90's Neighbours' legal property Toady taught us all that it was better to be a fat guy than a scrawny one. Nobody wanted a skinny man. Infact it was a hall-mark of male privelege that men didn't need to be attractive at all, one could effectively compensate through buying things. Sure opposites don't attract and superficial strategies attract superficial suitors, but nevertheless no man outside of Daniel John's was concerned about their weight. Better to be 'athletic' than fat I need to point out, even in the 90's. But the scrawny guy in class was an oddity, a freak, a statistical outlier. Something changed, I don't know. The cut of jeans or perhaps 'ironic' heroin use. But skinny guys are in.
The hour glass proportions, symmetry as beauty and the men's 'triangle' physique all had origins in our evolutionary gene selection. Skinnyness has no possible advantage on the sub-saharan plains. It indicates an inability to obtain sufficient calories, not even surplus calories. Are those who love men confused? Or has the frontal cortex finally beaten the amygdala into submission and reason (whatever it is) has finally overpowered subconscious cues?

4. Hip-hop culture stuck with winners. Why going by DR Jays' catalogue did all the current irony laden white fashion not come from african-american culture? They as yet haven't touched skinny jeans, and if they do, it won't last. Throw-back jerseys, baggy pants, XL shirts and generally looking like you could handle yourself in a fight have all stayed in. They have been refined, altered etc. But when did white people either A - give up, or B - take misguided initiative when it came to looking to our cooler cousins for fashion trends?

Only the man repeller seems to admit that style is pretty repulsive, but celebrated anyway. It doesn't provide any answers as to why current fashion trends are so popular.

Thus I remain perplexed. Perhaps because these questions have no answers. Perhaps fashion trends can get high subscription without any underlying subscription to philosophys or movements or aspirations to be anything.