J. Allen Holt: Less Important Than Fashion

I never give much thought to fashion. I have spent more time thinking about it this week than I had in the last 12 months combined. With “fashion” the topic for this week, I was banging my head against the wall trying to think of something to write about.

I came up with the idea a few days ago: "Hey. I know. I’ll write about the things that are less important than fashion." It should be a short list, right? Turned out, it was very short. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I couldn’t come up with one thing I thought was less important than fashion.

I thought maybe some obscure sport that no one paid attention to, such as polo. Even that, though, has some physical benefits for those involved. What does fashion do? Do you get a boost to your self-esteem from feeling good in your new clothes? Does that outweigh the body image problems caused by the industry’s continued use of pencil-thin models? I say the harm more than nullifies any good effect physically.

I’ll never be a spokesman for fashion. My fashion thinking follows the following steps: 1) What am I going to be doing? 2) What can I wear that will be appropriate and as comfortable as possible? 3) Is that thing clean, or do I need to do laundry first?

That’s the entirety of my thought process, and it takes about one second to process most the time. "It’s 100 degrees and I’m playing basketball: Shorts!" "It’s a wedding: No shorts!"

I haven’t really had very many serious romantic relationships in my life. So few, in fact, I wonder if there is perhaps something broken with me. There almost assuredly is, but that’s a topic for another conversation. There was one consistent thing about every girl that I dated though: they always tried to dress me. They would buy me clothes; rather, often, they’d pick out clothes that I was then to buy and wear. Now, is this something women do? Or was it because I’m hopeless? My feeling is it’s a bit of both. I just asked my roommate that question, though, and judging by her facial expression, I’m guessing it’s probably a lot of the latter.

I think I’m okay with it. Really, I am. I spend my waking hours thinking about many things. I have extreme bouts of insomnia that can last for days. I can’t sleep because I can’t switch off the thinking. Often those things I’m thinking about aren’t really very important, but they’re still more important than fashion.