>Why are people so concerned with having toes that look good
>in sandals?
Because they want to please and attract other humans? Because it's nice to cultivate beauty in everyday life?
Here's an excerpt from a piece my friend Steve Duncombe wrote for a rant-a-thon fundraiser last year. Steve is a self-identified socialist dandy.
Doug
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I know what you are thinking: But Steve, leisure clothes are so comfortable. Maybe for you, but how about for the rest of us who have to look at you? When was the last time you walked down the streets and commented on how nice someone's Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt looked? Or when you noted how a person's fluffy white Reeboks complimented their ankles? I'll take a guess: Never.
When a woman or man takes time to dress in the morning: Making sure their shoes are shined, their jacket pressed. Tying on a scarf or tie that picks up a color in their shirt or a line in their pinstripe. Checking themselves in the mirror to make sure the whole assemblage looks right before heading out the door. When a person does this they give a gift to the world; they are a walking piece of self-generated art. Sure it might hurt a little: the shoes pinch and the jacket is hot, but it's a selfless sacrifice. Such a person dress for the public, not merely for themselves.
But what of the person dressed in comfort clothes? Who are they dressing for? An easy answer: themselves. We are used to calling those women and men who dress to the nines vain, condemning them for being obsessed with themselves. This gets it all wrong. It is the man and woman who dresses without a thought to what the rest of us on the street have to look at who is selfish. They give us nothing and themselves everything. Leisure wear is the manifestation of an alienated bourgeois individualism; the well turned out man or woman is the paragon of public, socialist virtue.
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