Dark Brown Waffles

In what was an apparently horrendous fashion faux-pas, an actress at the Golden Globes - an actress whose work was highly praised via a nomination that she received for it- was caught wearing toe shoes. This is nightmarish, according to the people who trouble themselves with caring about what third-parties are wearing out in public. The author writes:

Vibram Five Fingers are not appropriate footwear for a black tie event. Nor, I would argue, are toe shoes (this kind, not the sort used in ballet) appropriate for the supermarket, the airport, the library, the restaurant, or anywhere else that’s not a running trail or a gym: nobody wants to see your creepy, articulated toes, hippies.

Here is another option for the author: fuck off. Without ever having spoken to the actress in question, whose work I haven’t seen, I’m going to assume that she chose those particular shoes because she found them - HEAVEN FORBID! - comfortable. The author acknowledges as much later:

They should be allowed to wear things that are weird, or unflattering, or that betray a preference for comfort, or show what someone older and more sensible might say is “too much” skin; making mistakes, so long as you learn from them, is a large part of developing your own taste. 

You’ll note that in this acknowledgement though, the author writes as though preferring comfort over the alternative (discomfort) is somehow a mistake that public figures must learn to avoid. Why? Because if they don’t…the author will be bored:

The alternative — awards show after awards show of generically flattering, stylist-selected blush-colored dresses and Louboutins — is almost too stultifying to contemplate.

Because you see, this young woman owes the author the entertainment value of her clothing. Owes her. Just as journalists owe their corporate owners a world in which jeans don’t exist. Just as everybody owes hipsters a world without fashion that they personally approve of. It is almost as if none of these people is capable of accepting a world in which different people make decisions differently than their own.

My wife today was aghast that I chose to go to work without having combed my hair. I chose to do so for three reasons: my hair is at a length where it cannot be combed, it was pouring rain which allowed my hair to get wet and thus fixed, and because if somebody is going to interact with me professionally but not be able to get past the bird’s nest upon my dome, fuck ‘em. Seriously, fuck ‘em. As if somehow I cannot be good at my job if my hair is a wreck; as if somehow I cannot be effective because I am wearing jeans instead of a three piece suit; as if somehow I am less capable because I haven’t shaved in several weeks.

Because implicitly, that is at least part of the argument that these people are making. Let’s revisit that actress for a minute. She appeared in a film - the well-reviewed George Clooney The Descendants - and was nominated for her performance. So she chose to dress nicely by almost every standard that people (who she has probably never met) invented out of ether, save one. And that one refusal to conform to standards that she never agreed to her in the first place is enough for these people to make her an object of derision. The fact that she apparently gave a great performance in an appreciated movie is outweighed by the HIDEOUS DECISION TO PRIORITIZE HER OWN COMFORT OVER THEIR FRANKLY INSANE STANDARDS.

I dream of the day when this sort of judgment is turned around; when it isn’t the person who prioritizes their own comfort getting described as the weirdo, but the person getting bent out of shape about is. Because that’s how it ought to work. These folks revel in the rank condescension that they visit upon others for the crime of prioritizing their world differently. That’s literally the entirety of their contribution to the world. They offer nothing more substantive than a list of rules which they have privately agreed too; that the rest of us haven’t is simply of no matter.

What truly confuses is why they simply can’t enjoy the things that they enjoy - like being uncomfortable apparently - without insisting that everybody else be uncomfortable too. Is the world really so awful if somebody thinks wearing toe shoes is a better idea than wearing whatever ridiculous shoes the author would have put her in instead?