Re: queen for a day
It's really irritating to hear people who are privileged to sit around at email all day, subtly devaluing those who dress "worse" than them. it seems that's what they are doing when they support a standard of beauty and aesthetics that seems hegemonic over any internal values and ethics (including that of cultures / classes that aren't theirs) that are not immediately visible. sometimes it just sounds so smug ... the idea that something is wrong with you if you don't adhere to some complex code of dress.
I realize that this is the common viewpoint (in fact, my co-worker criticized me about the same thing -- indirectly, by bitching about it behind my back, referring to me) -- that one should maintain one's appearance or you deserve to be treated like shit (i.e. you should shop at macys instead of getting holey sweaters at thrift stores). that co-worker of mine is pretty working class, she doesn't have much ... but those of us who make only $10 an hour have only a few choices in this respect. we can either max out our credit cards and conform to the existing standards (and forget about buying books, at least new ones), and so on, or we can look ordinary, kind of dull, and kind of ragged around the edges. a lot of the people I used to tutor at bronx community college are like that, despite the assumption that working-class people are more likely to dress well..
Why can't we contest these surface representations and seek friends / mates from something that is related to our philosophical nature? the focus on aesthetics indicates to me another aspect of alienated consumer society, because valorizing the beauty of one or another person takes precedence over other things like their personality, or their commitment to living a full life. I think it is perhaps true that the way we clothe our bodies is a reflection of more basic core values, but as cultural norms like this are saturated with capitalist-created insecurity, we should really look at the reasons why body types / clothing / etc. are subjected to universally defined standards.
In a way you could see the aesthetic standards of TV-culture being hegemonically applied and also globally circulated. You've seen what the consequences of beauty pageants that valorize a globalized body type of european women are (e.g. Nigeria's riots).. or the global market for sex tourism. The aesthetic hegeomy is racialized as well (e.g. Baywatch)
And it's also interesting that, when contesting these values by dressing differently, that people will assume you're unclean (kind of in the sense of being ritually impure). I have to laugh, because a lot of those well-groomed men I see don't even wash their hands after taking a piss.
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