I have been amused at the attention a post on pants wearing has garnered. The underlying assumption is of course that we make a real choice in what we wear. Some of you looked in your dresser this morning and swore you made a choice in what to wear. This is why for most of you, what you wore is virtually indistinguishable from what everyone else wore. Even you goth eccentrics – ones I’m sure who frequent this site – look like every other goth, from New York to Los Angeles to Budapest. Even those that sew their own clothes, look all the same because they buy the same fabrics and work from the same patterns, although they work a lot harder to look like each other. There are two groups that have the most control over how they look, those that sew their own and those for whom the price of clothes isn’t a real impediment to financial security. If they happen to look with scorn upon what you wear, the reason might just be that they had to sacrifice to conform to what they consider an ideal. When you claim to share the same ideal, they know you are for the most part full of it. You share the ideal only in such much as it is easy and low-cost. This tends to make countercultural people a bit grumpy.
I’m not sure at this point what to make of countercultural people. Being countercultural isn’t just some excuse to be a jerk of course. But if you find countercultural people threatening, it is probably more a reflection of your own insecurity. No one made you see what is counter-cultural as an ideal. There is little reason you should be shocked that they get offended when you try to pull yourself off as valuing their ideal when you clearly don’t. I guess personally I wish people would focus on the broader social choices and stop pretending that everyone can live a faithful middle class American existence through personal choice. That this society doesn’t provide the tools to live faithfully doesn’t mean you should rag on those that can find ways to live certain parts faithfully.
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