Tennis: Fashion Is The New Game
Aug 26, 2003/ FW/ --- The US Open which is being held from Aug 25 to Sep 5, 2003
is looking like a prelude to New York Fashion Week.
With female athletes wearing 'tennis couture,' they are not just competing for
the $1 milliongrand prize, but also, who is the best dressed.
Currently No. 7 seed, Jennifer Capriati, and with 14 career titles for singles,
wears a a racer-back tank with a halter- top. The style might be simple, but the
fabric is the key element.
Printed and made in France, Capriati's dress has a patriotic look and feel that
is perfect for America's top tennis star.
The navy dress features white stars and a gold shimmer to the entire fabric. The
fabric is a blend of nylon, polyester and lycra for a form-fitting look.
Capriati wears navy and metallic gold accessories to complement the dress.
Number 1 seed, Kim Clijsters dons a sexy and reflective look on-court at the US
Open.
You won't be able to miss Kim compete in a silver lame' dress with white and
black accessories.
The simple lines of the racer-back tank silhouette make the fabric the key
focus. The nylon and spandex blend fabric is a bold look for the world's number
one tennis player.
Clijsters and Capriati will wear their dresses during select matches over the
course of the tournament when they are not wearing Fila's US Open Collection of
in-line apparel.
And for those of you who wants to wants those dresses, both will be available
for retail.
Capriati's dress will be available with very limited distribution at Paragon in
New York and at Fila's on-site retail store at the US Open. The suggested retail
price of Capriati's dress is $90.
Clijsters' dress will be sold only at Fila's US Open store at the event.
Both players will wear Fila US Open tennis footwear that has been customized to
complement their special make-up apparel.
The outfits were designed by Fila's Design Director Freya Tamayo who was
inspired by strong female athletes who train hard and dedicate their lives to
sports. Tamayo wanted to spotlight the women's talent with a bold look on-court.
This is not the first time that Fila brought a fashion revolution on the tennis
court. Thirty years ago, Fila changed tennis fashion history with the
introduction of color to "tennis whites." A new standard was set in tennis
apparel when Bjorn Borg graced the courts of Wimbledon and the French Open
wearing a form-fitting cream shirt with red pinstripes and shorts with a red and
navy waistband.
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Barbie Beauty Boutique
First off, I don't know what game the other reviews on this page are talking
about, with the ice skating, Prince Stephan, castle, and maze references. The
Barbie Beauty Boutique we bought had nothing like that.
My four daughters (ages 4, 6, 8, and almost 11) have been seeing this game
advertised on TV, and all four of them wanted it so bad. I caved in and
purchased the game for $30.00 at a store in town, even though we usually never
spend that much on a PC game. We took it home, installed it, and all four girls
played it, but really didn't like it much. It's just not that much fun. On the
TV adds and on the box it sounds like there are a lot more outfits, jewelry, and
hairstyles to choose from than there are in reality. The hairstyles especially
disappointed us. You can either choose to style the hair in an "updo" or leave
it down. We expected to be able to have choices like braids or pony tails, but
there is nothing like that, the only hairstyle choices are "updo" styles. Most
of the hairstyles looked fake and weird to me, my girls said they looked stupid.
If you choose to leave the hair down you do get to decide how long the hair is,
and whether to leave it strait or make it curly, but the curly hair looked as
weird as the hairstyles. The accessory choices for the hair were mostly dorky
looking, especially the butterflies and flowers. There were also not a lot of
hair accessories to choose from, they just had a few things to choose from. I
think the hair styling part is what my girls looked forward to the most so they
were disappointed. I also have a problem with a lot of the clothing choices, a
whole lot of midriff shirts and short skirts. The make up and nails part was
alright, but nothing great.
The plus of the game is that it is easy for the kids to play so younger girls
will be able to play with little to no help. (My 4 year old was fine with it, no
problems at all.) However, the clothing choices and event choices are more
geared to kids maybe 8 and up. My 4 and 6 year old girls didn't like as many of
the clothing styles as the 8 and 10 year old did. If you are looking for a game
that an older girl would like that is easy to play, this fits that bill. It
would be a good game for girls who are older but haven't yet had much computer
experience yet. (They learn quick though!)
All in all the game is not bad, but I do regret paying what we did for it. If I
had it to do over again I would probably wait until the game was older and
therefore not so expensive. If your kids want it, maybe you should see if they
like the idea of the What's Her Face PC game instead. We have had that game for
about a year, and it still gets played with. It's along the same lines as the
Barbie Beauty Boutique, you get to choose hairstyles and clothing for your doll.
There is a little more to it than the BBB, though, so I think it is more fun for
the kids to play. With the What's Her Face game you get to choose your dolls
face, which is fun, and then you get to choose dance moves and music for the
ending scene. However, with some girls it's got to be Barbie, so that may make
the BBB better in their eyes. Beauty, Advertising, Makeup and Fashion - a Primer
Beauty follows the First Law of Economics, which says that something can't be
valuable unless it's rare. Therefore, if everyone is beautiful, then beauty is
no longer of any value – or else we have to quickly redefine beauty so that only
about 5% of the population have it, and then commercial enterprises can continue
freaking out the other 95% and taking their money.
Most of us – we who belong to the 95% – can't even begin to aspire to beauty
(you're either born with it or not), but we can successfully attempt its poor
relation, attractiveness. This aspiration is what keeps the beauty industry
going – and going strong.
Advertising
Marketing, and its henchman, Advertising, are the best means of freaking out the
human race, the individual members of which are known as "consumers" (alias
patsies and suckers). Both marketing and advertising follow the law that says if
you can make people afraid, you can manipulate them into doing anything, no
matter how ludicrous on one hand or unethical on the other.
And what are women most afraid of? Easy: being unloved, unwanted and left to
live alone and die unmourned. Of course, the guys aren't crazy about these
things either, but it doesn't seem to be their main concern, and such fears
don't motivate their every decision. (Well, they don't have much to worry about,
do they? – with hundreds of relationship-obsessed women throwing themselves at
every man capable of standing upright and breathing.)
The beauty industry has succeeded in convincing women throughout the world that
without its products, such as make-up, they do not meet the minimum requirements
for attractiveness. This is a brilliant exploitation of Every woman's most basic
fear.
Make-up
Make-up – as in lipstick, eye-liner, etc – is about attempting to create the
illusion of beauty, and should that be impossible, then at least to meet the
minimum criteria for attractiveness. For the female face, this means – primarily
– big eyes and a big mouth (or a "generous" mouth, as beauty-speak usually puts
it, thereby branding people born with small mouths as stingy or petty).
Big eyes and a big mouth are the facial equivalent of "tits and ass": without
them you won't get noticed. Make-up that does anything other than enhance these
features – or hide others – is not really make-up, just fashion.
By wearing make-up, a woman maximizes her own attractiveness and at the same
time gets bonus points for making an effort – from both men and women. In other
words, in contemporary society, a woman wearing make-up is "normal", and this
gets her "good girl" points. The approval of the people around her is her reward
for making an effort to look alluring, because this is "feminine" behaviour. On
the other hand, society doesn't cut any slack for a plain or ugly woman who
wears no make-up: she gets categorised as either a dyke or someone who has "let
herself go" – by both men and women.
(A beautiful woman doesn't get caught in this morass at all, for the simple
reason that make-up may enhance, but doesn't dramatically change, what her face
looks like. Fortunately for the beauty industry, women tend to have very poor
self-esteem, so that even the beautiful 5% often find themselves ugly and in
need of cosmetic help.)
Men who don't wear make-up are not criticised because it's always been assumed
they have something better to do with their lives – and their money. A man who
is obsessed with his appearance is scorned as shallow, futile and
not-too-intelligent – but these same qualities in a woman are considered
"feminine".
If you've never thought about that before, I suggest you do so. Just a
suggestion.
In the sexual attractiveness game, make-up gives physically mediocre women an
extra chance at finding a mate, the way money or power typically gives an extra
chance to physically mediocre men. (And – as my Australian friends always say –
the way beer gives ugly people of both sexes the chance to get laid.) And I'm
not knocking this! After all, once you've been conned by the illusion of beauty
(whether created by make-up or by beer) into sticking around to find out more,
you may discover all sorts of hidden treasures – like intelligence, wit,
kindness, good character and so on.
Apart from the advantage it gives you in the mate-selecting stakes, there is one
more important function of beauty/attractiveness, and that's simply to make your
life more pleasant, because people – strangers in particular – are nicer to you
when you're good-looking. Numerous experiments have shown this, so I won't dwell
on it. Needless to say, anything that reduces the amount of mean or dismissive
behaviour you have to put up with from other people is worth having. So even if
you've chosen a mate and no longer consider yourself to be on the sexual market,
being attractive is still a huge advantage in everyday life.
Fashion
So what on earth is Fashion about? First of all, the trickle-down effect has
resulted in what used to be the exclusive pastime of kings and their courtiers
(because no-one else, mercifully, had the spare time or money for it) trickling
down to us, the latter-day peasants. Yet when you consider how many members of
royalty throughout the ages have been barking mad as a result of third stage
syphilis or inbreeding, you wonder why the peasants didn't think twice before
emulating them – but no.
Stupidity, and the outward signs thereof, is clearly even more infectious than
the common cold. It seems that the only thing that mattered to the peasants was
that the aristos were enjoying themselves a lot more; so when the peasants
finally had enough money to copy the behaviour of the courtiers, they copied
without discrimination.
This is because human beings have a built-in tendency to get confused. They
confuse having enough money to spend some of it on stupid things, and buying
stupid things anyway, whether or not they can afford it. This is one of the
reasons for the success of the fashion industry. To put it another way: the
peasants envy the Rajah because he's rich enough to possess an elephant, so
instead of concluding: "It would be a good idea to get rich", they think: "It
would be a good idea to have an elephant." If people ever learn to think
clearly, the fashion industry is in for a big shock – but I don't think this is
very likely, not on any great scale anyway.
I have in front of me a picture of Hyacinthe Rigaud's 1701 portrait of Louis
XIV. Now, however bored you may be with seeing men in suits, you'd have to admit
that most suits are preferable to what old King Lou is wearing in this picture.
Even the funkiest of my friends would not want to be seen with this guy! I
personally am pretty relieved that men no longer wear huge furry bedspreads
hiked up around their thighs to show off their legs, the whole thing topped with
a billowing blouse and a wig that looks like roadkill [iii].
Women, however, are still wearing the kind of poncy, strappy, high-heeled shoes
Lou-boy has on. In case you didn't know it, today's "contemporary" shoe styles
for women come straight out of 16th- and 17th-century court portraits – as any
theatrical costumier can tell you. But at least in those days the courtiers were
carried everywhere in sedan-chairs. Think about that the next time you're
running for the bus and your high-fashion poncy, strappy shoes are killing you.
So what the hell has happened? In the 20th and 21st centuries, men have opted
for comfort and conformity, while women have gone in for the equivalent of
ancient-Chinese foot-binding – and conformity. So why are so many women still
prepared to endure physical torture and financial hardship in the name of
fashion, whereas most men find it pointless (as long as they're not involved),
tiresome (when they are), and – occasionally – amusing?
To try and understand it, I first looked at two control groups – men who take
fashion seriously [iv], and women who don't. This was interesting! To cover my
ass, let me state the obvious – that I am not an anthropologist, and this was
not a scientific study. However.
The only fashion-conscious man I know at all well has constructed his entire
identity around his success with women, and by association, around his
appearance and the way he markets himself in order to be successful with women.
This admirable ability to stick to his priorities is just tapering off now that
he's in his late forties and is starting to take an additional interest in a)
how to avoid having an impoverished old age, b) how to find a job he actually
enjoys doing (as opposed to the boring ones he's always done) and c) how to make
up for the many bad decisions he made when still a young man.
The obvious thing that strikes you is that the focus of this man's life has been
the same as for most women while they're young: 1) his appearance, and 2)
romantic entanglements with the opposite sex. Well, you know what the French say
about it: "For men, love is just one of many things in life; for women, it's the
main thing." This guy has lived his life like a woman. All his time, money, and
attention for the last thirty years have gone into making himself and his home
look more alluring. (And being Italian, he has managed to navigate his way
through the forests of fashion with aplomb, adopting those that suit him, and
ignoring everything that doesn't. That's style, not fashion – and I've just
realised that as such, this man only partially qualifies for my survey as "a man
who takes fashion seriously."
Also, I've just remembered that his wife owns a boutique. We'll have to delete
him from the survey entirely, on the grounds that he has some sound financial
reasons for taking an interest in it.)
Now for the control-group of women. Among my female friends are a few who are –
at best – lukewarm about fashion. At this point, I can't do better than quote
what Scott Adams says about engineers:
"Clothes are the lowest priority for an engineer, assuming the basic thresholds
for temperature and decency have been satisfied. If no appendages are freezing
or sticking together, and if no genitalia or mammary glands are swinging around
in plain view, then the objective of clothing has been met" [v].
Precisely
My interpretation is that when you have something more challenging to occupy
your brain, or alternatively, something more meaningful to occupy your time,
then changing your entire wardrobe twice a year according to the vagaries of
fashion is futile to the point of imbecility. (It makes no economic sense
either, unless you're filthy rich and utterly lacking in imagination.) And as
for spending more than 10 seconds every morning wondering what to wear – oh
puleeze!
Paradoxically, I do know one woman who became an utter fashion-victim as a
result of being the best mathematical mind at both school and university,
because at the same time she was too plain and pudgy to be of interest to most
of the guys. What she really wanted for herself was 1) attractiveness (for the
purpose of mate-finding) and 2) style, but instead she pursued every ditzy
fashion that came along in an attempt to be as popular as the ditzes who could
barely add two and two.
That she got sucked into the whole racket is sad, but you can understand it. The
only thing that'll make most men overlook the crime you commit by being better
than them at maths and the sciences (the only subjects that really count for
men), is having a face and body like Jerry Hall or Claudia Schiffer. And even
then, they'll only overlook it temporarily. For me, the most surprising thing
about this story is that she knew what her objectives were, but chose entirely
the wrong methods of achieving them. I started to look around and found that
this was extremely common!
All in all, what my survey of the women I know revealed is what we all knew
anyway: that being very brainy and successful, fantastic though it is, doesn't
relieve the pain of not being loved. It's a buyers' market for the men, and
always has been.
Let's get back to the original question: Why is fashion such a preoccupation
with women, but not with men? The main reason is that Fashion is a pretext for
Shopping, and this is the activity that most women enjoy above all others. Why?
Because you don't need any skill, talent or concentration to enjoy shopping.
It's easy, and promises instant gratification. (It's the female equivalent of
slumping in front of a football game on TV, with a can of beer in one hand and
the remote control in the other.)
The proof of this is that even if you're a clueless shopper who regularly buys
things so hideous and unsuitable that you can never wear them, you still
continue to enjoy the process of shopping as much as the more savvy buyers. And
what's so enjoyable about the process? Well, for many women, shopping is the one
activity in which they are the buyers, not the trying-to-be-bought. Factor in
all those women who don't have careers or interests outside the tedium of
housekeeping and child-care, and it's easy to understand the appeal of shopping.
Besides, even if you can't afford most of the glitzy things you see (and have
the sense to know it), you can still look at them and dream – just as the guys
can dream of being the latest whizz-kid on the football pitch.
The crux of the matter is this: marketeers of fashion have deliberately blurred
the original purpose of fashion – which was to relieve the undying boredom of
having to appear at Court every day and kiss the King's ass – and mixed it up
with the quest for beauty – a much more universal quest. By convincing women
that fashion is an aid to beauty in much the same way that make-up is, the
fashion marketeers have hugely overstated its importance in the average female's
life. And females have, once again, swallowed this confused message hook, line
and sinker.
Instead of reasoning: "This fashion is total bullshit because 80% of women don't
have the legs for an ultra-short cheerleader skirt", the woman thinks, "If I
could starve myself down to 46 kilos my legs would be skeletally thin and then
I'd look good enough to wear this season's fashionable ultra-short cheerleader
skirt." Marvellous! This way not only the fashion industry wins, but the beauty
and diet industries continue to win as well.
Actually, when I think back to my friend the mathematician/fashion-victim, I'm
not even sure we can blame the marketeers. We human beings just tend to
automatically muddle the issues and kid ourselves. All the marketeers have to do
is exploit and encourage this.
To state the obvious: without regular, arbitrary changes in fashion, everyone
would already have all the clothes, shoes and handbags they needed, and wouldn't
have to buy more until the existing ones wore out. This is how most men function
– they wear stuff until it falls to pieces. And since I got wise to the futility
of shopping for the sake of shopping, this is more or less what I do too. Every
now and then one of my girlier friends tries to smarten me up or make me over –
and some have actually gone so far as to give me their cast-off clothing! When
this happens, I usually buy a new handbag, and that shuts them up for a while
because they think their advice is having some effect.
This desire to take care of everyone, even those who don't need taking care of,
highlights another of fashion's "uses": female bonding. So how exactly do
fashion and shopping achieve female-bonding? I think it's a typically female
preoccupation because it appears to be competitive, but in fact is normative.
(At least, from my lowly position on the economic ladder, it's normative. Higher
up, among the super-rich, it's probably a fight to the death. At those dizzy
heights, all the competition is in being The First to Have
something-or-the-other.)
Among us mere mortals, however, everyone is envious of the beautiful – so if one
woman is much more beautiful than the others in a group, this is unsettling –
and potentially divisive. Fashion, on the other hand, pretends to be an
equalizer – the way school uniforms are supposed to be. If everyone is kitted
out according to the same "theme" (and that's all each fashion is – a theme),
the beautiful woman goes on being the most beautiful, but The Rest of Us get to
share the illusion and feel that we are part of some kind of community – no
matter how half-assed it is. And we get to engage in that most female of
behaviours, Trying to Make Our Friends Feel Better About Themselves, as in: "But
you aren't fat! No way!" and "You think you have saggy tits! Have you seen
mine??" and "Men like big bums – what are you worrying about?" ... and all sorts
of other totally untrue, but totally sincere, rubbish.
If fashion – and its corollary, shopping – is important to women as a form of
female bonding, you could be forgiven for asking why they don't have the same
zest for other activities they can spend time on together: like bridge, bingo,
or even train-spotting.
Well, for one thing, because those activities haven't been marketed to the hilt
as pastimes for young, beautiful, desirable women! And for another, they require
a tad more effort, and don't promise quite the same instant gratification. Gosh,
in bridge and bingo you won't even win all the time! How much fun can that be?
With shopping, when you hand over your credit-card and receive your bauble, you
always feel like a winner. That's all it takes. Have I mentioned instant
gratification?
Of course the female-bonding function of fashion is exploited and amplified by
the businesspeople who make money out of it – that goes without saying. But if
women weren't so gaga about shopping in the first place, the designers and
makers wouldn't make any money out of it. Thanks to the interaction between the
gender bonders in their female ghetto and the businesspeople who supply them,
fashion is a self-perpetuating virus, a thing of total and utter futility.
As I've already intimated, I have no quarrel with make-up – although I do think
it's hopelessly time-consuming, and that as such plastic surgery is a much
better alternative. I have no quarrel with the human weakness for physical
beauty either – we're made that way, and there's no point being resentful about
it. I don't object to marketing and advertising either, on the grounds that i)
they take advantage of ignorance and muddled thinking, and ii) if people didn't
suffer as a result of their own bad decisions, they might never be motivated to
use their brains at all.
But with fashion, what vexes me most is that because women as a demographic are
this industry's biggest suckers, all women get branded as idiots by association
– even those of us who have seen through the nonsense.
I don't give a shit that some women wear things that emphasize their roly-poly
tummies or chunky ankles: after all, I enjoy a good laugh as much as anyone
else. What offends me to the point of contemplating a sex-change is that women
are so cavalier with two of the most crucial aspects of their own well-being: 1)
their physical health, and 2) their financial security. On the subject of your
physical health: each of us has only one body, no matter what the stem-cell
researchers may try to tell you. If you mess up your feet, your knees, your
hip-joints and your spinal column, not only are you choosing to go through your
life in pain, but you will continue to suffer the consequences long after you've
stopped wearing insane footwear.
In addition, what kind of message do you think you are sending to the rest of
the world, when on one hand you are a believer in detoxing your system of white
sugar and coffee, but on the other you continue to wear shoes that dull your
mind with pain every minute of the day? The message is: "I am a total moron."
On the subject of financial security: if, instead of hitting the shops in search
of the latest overpriced outfit or "miracle skin treatment", you invested your
money, you'd probably have a very nice nest-egg by the time you were forty,
instead of a wardrobe full of outdated gladrags – and the same wrinkles as
everyone else.
Think about it: women, including lawyers and engineers, are still paid only 75%
of what their male counterparts earn for doing the same work. So why are they
spending so much more than men on clothes that a) they can only wear for a
season or two – and indeed, may not wear at all – and b) may be painful and
damaging to their health?? My opinion is that the missing 25% constitutes a kind
of stupidity tax, and will only disappear when women stop broadcasting their
silliness to the world around them.
i When I use the word "beauty", I am referring to the conventionally accepted
standards of physical beauty that prevail in Western society, such as a slender
body, the appearance of youthfulness, regular features and all that. In other
words, the kind of beauty that is currently fashionable.
ii The answer is: governments, like commercial enterprises, seek to gain control
over people, and scaring them is one of the methods they use. Commerce
concentrates on our purses, and politicians on our votes – but both use the way
they share "information" with us to screw with our minds.
And by the way, the kind of advertising politicians do is not, of course, called
"advertising" – it's called "spin". If it were called "advertising", they'd
presumably fall within the purview of the Advertising Standards Authority, and
be hung out to dry every time they misrepresented something. And we can't have
that! Governments everywhere would grind to a halt under such rigorous
conditions.
iii Maybe if the king had been a good-looking man in the first place, we females
could overlook the ensemble – and in addition we'd be keen to get his kit off,
thereby solving the problem.
iv I am not counting male designers and clothing manufacturers. As their
interest is purely in making money, you can at least understand why they take an
interest in fashion. |
