Saturday 23 April 2011

Will you listen to yourself?

I caught a few minutes of some thing on telly the other day, I know not what programme it was, which irritated me intensely in its format anyway and then left me laughing out loud at something one of the hysterical popinjays on it said.

The segment I caught involved a single dad who dressed almost exclusively in black T-shirts and combat trousers receiving a fashion make-over from what the TV companies inevitably call 'experts' and, worse, his own 9-year-old son. A series of hideous colour combinations and shocking, mutton-dressed-as-lamb clothing choices were considered before they eventually settled on an awful, 70s-style floral print shirt, which peeped out over a mustard coloured tank top under some kind of blouson-style jacket. He looked, needless to say, ridiculous. A 40-something year old of a certain, how shall we say? Of a certain body shape, should not be dressing like that.

He then went on a blind date, during which we were invited to believe that he was taking and acting upon advice given to him by his child, fed to him through an earpiece which his date did 'not know was there'. Only if they were unable to see a bloody great appendage stuck to the side of his head did they not know. An utterly nauseating piece of viewing that I can only assume was aimed at kids, so superficial was it. But it was something said during that earlier fashion makeover section which made me laugh.

As he stepped out of the changing room dressed as I described earlier, and everybody agreed how much better he looked, the squeaking fop who'd been chosen to dress him hung a long-handled man bag over his shoulders with the words, "Now, this is not just for fashion, it's useful too." I almost had to play those few seconds of the thing again to make sure I'd heard him correctly. Was this individual even aware of the words coming out of his own mouth? He was persuading the subject of the show to take it on the grounds that it, a bag, an item designed essentially to carry stuff, could carry stuff in addition to its primary function, which was clearly just to look good.

I realise that this is basically one of the fundamental principles of the fashion industry and an entirely pointless thing to complain about, because it simply isn't going to change, but I just think it absolutely encapsulates beautifully the shallowness and vacuity of fashion generally and, perhaps more pertinently, people's willingness to accept its absurdities unquestioningy. Personally, I'd have told him and the kid to eff off...

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