I look at this kind of thing, and the only explanation I can come up with is that certain fashion items are intended to send a signal about the wearer. D'uh! you will say, but the signal these items send is a little odd. That signal is: I am so young and pretty that it doesn't matter *what* manner of ugliness I put on my body; you will still think I am hot.
Unfortunately, a number of people are emboldened by fashion magazines to wear these sorts of items even when their bodies are aggressively countersignalling.
Megan, did you see the Meat-Guzzler article that Ezra linked to this morning?
Maybe the signal is "I want to take this thing off as much as you do."
It's intended to attract bees. And no small number of other winged insects will also appear. Wear this thing even one block outside of the brick-and-concrete city and an Alfred Hitchcock film will break out.
"I am so young and pretty that it doesn't matter *what* manner of ugliness I put on my body; you will still think I am hot."
Isn't that 90% of fashion?
Alternative signal for the beauty-impaired: "I'm not ugly, my dress is ugly."
It's like a "Hawaiian shirt" for women. Or I suppose more accurately its a "Brazilian shirt."
Someone got paid money (and probably a lot of it) to design that.
There is somewhere a semi famous old picture of Marilyn Monroe in a burlap bag, probably prompted by some wag imagining on how good she'd look in a potato sack.
Maybe the fashion industry brins back the fashions associated with current economic times. A few years ago the economy was rolling along and the girls were wearing tings and flats just like the good old boom days of the '80s. Recently the fashion trends have veered back to the stagflation style of the 70's.
That fabric certainly wouldn't look good on everybody. Or that style of dress. But I think it would on some. And for sheer inate ugly, that outfit doesn't even come close to what I see some people walking around in.
Maybe you've just been blessed with living in areas of better fashion sense than Northern California, of course, but....
I thought the message that sends is, "I'm so gullible I'll wear something designed by a woman-hating gay man, and pay dearly for the privilege."
Of course, some guys like gullible women...
Cf. the Handicap principle:
In this case, you advertize hotness by squandering it.But really, most men aren't looking at your silly clothes much, anyway. We don't care about them. That you're wearing them suggests on the one hand your own fashion-blindness, but on the other, that you think you can get away with it. They about cancel out.
There's a case to be made that it's actually a filter: ugly fashions will tend to drive off some men, but not all. This might be desirable in two ways. One is in just cutting down on the amount of hitting-on that you have to endure. Which for a sufficiently beautiful woman can be a lot... or so I've read. (I'm a dog.) Another would be if there's some tendancy for fashion-blind men to be more desirable to women, in some way.
Another would be if there's some tendancy for fashion-blind men to be more desirable to women, in some way.
Like, they're less likely to be shallow, mincing metrosexual ninnies struggling to get their poetry published, and more likely to be sweaty firefighters?
In web design, I have to make sure that my design works the same on both IE and Firefox. I wonder if there's any advantage to an outfit that displays the same to normal people and those who are colorblind.
Heck, 90% of supposed fashion has me think it's the fabric equivalent of a practical joke. And the cream of the joke is--slap a label on it and you'll get gullible fools falling over themselves to pay for the privilege of wearing it.
Well, I don't think it's that bad. I like dresses, mid-length skirts, etc., and this looks like something out of the JCPenney catalogue circa 1962.
But otoh, I admit to being partial to 50's and earlier fashions, Audrey Hepburn, etc. Anything past the mid-60's doesn't really push my aesthetic buttons except for the odd case here and there - the 'Annie Hall' look for example.
It's not something for a 30ish 6'2" woman to wear, but I think it's fine for a woman in her 20s to wear to an outdoor summer cocktail party or wedding reception.
More to the point, Megan, why do you look through the J. Crew catalog. You should get over it. You're not getting any younger.
Bahia? This is about Obama!
Forget these tacky floral print dresses. Tall women look terrific in pants. A couple pairs of designer jeans accentuating your elongated curves would suit you perfectly.
My fashion tip for the day:
Since arriving at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, I have come to the conclusion that most women look pretty good in ECW gear. Especially when they are outnumbered two-to-one by men.
Downside: when it's 40 below and windy and everyone is wearing their big red parka, facemask and snow goggles, that hot chick may in fact be a 240 pound, bearded man. Take care!
I think such a dress signals that the wearer is such a fashion victim as to actually spend a lot of money on a dress that is so trendy as to look ridiculous to the 95% of the general population who sees it and will look ridiculous in 6 months to the 5% who think it looks good now.
Women who spend money on hyper-trendy fashions are merely signalling that they spend most of their income on what they look like. For guys who like high-maintenance ladies: it's a good indication of how much money you can expect to drop if you get involved with them.
Alas, I must agree with those who say that this is not a signal that fashion is changing for the worse, merely an indicator that you, Megan, have outgrown J. Crew.
As another 6'2" Thirty-something, I can relate, but you need to face facts.
Fashion is for the MTV demographic.
We're in the VH1 demographic. We don't have fashion. We have taste.