The Hookerization of America

To begin, let me confess that I am an unabashed fuddy-duddy. I admit freely that, after a long struggle, I accepted fuddy-duddyhood as an unavoidable consequence of reaching middle age. That acceptance has simplified my life. I no longer feel compelled to promote the illusion that I am hip or cool; I don't know or care what Madonna or Michael Jackson or any of the other modern multi-millionaire icons are saying or doing or wearing, and I don't understand why anybody else knows or cares either. I can now, without shame or embarrassment, expound at length on how and why things were better in my day, and decry any of a long list of modern stupidities--which, as you may have guessed, is what I am going to do a bit of here.

My thesis runs something like this: The segments of the advertising and fashion industries that cater to young people are run by pimps and scoundrels who, in pursuit of profit, push the idea that it is somehow fashionable to look and act like prostitutes and hoodlums. As proof, I submit any tv ad aimed at the below-thirty crowd, or, even better, almost any recent issue of a fashion magazine (men's or women's will do). What you find are photo layouts and advertisements that show young women barely old enough to sprout breasts, wearing clothes that are little more than underwear. Their lips and eyes and cheeks are painted in garish colors and designs that could only look attractive in a dimly lit bar or brothel or skid-row alley. Take one of these young women out into the sunlight, and what you have is a grotesque looking clown.

In my ancient day, girls went to great lengths to promote at least the appearance of chastity. To look like a tart was not cool. Times have sure changed. To paraphrase a currently popular comparison, if you look like a hooker, and walk like a hooker, and talk like a hooker, chances are good that you're not a duck.

I understand the problems faced by an industry that depends for survival on an ever-changing and expanding market. If everyone just bought and wore clothes they liked and that looked good on them, and if they actually wore them until they wore out, much of the fashion industry would soon have to get a real job. But as long as they can keep moving the fashion target, they can continue to plant the idea in people's minds that what they wear defines who they really are. They have to make the public believe that last years styles are passe. But if they were so good last year, why aren't they good this year, too?

Now that they have gone about as far as they can with women, they are starting on the men. Boys with bizarre haircuts and earrings who look as if they might have to shave every week or two, wear open-fronted jackets that reveal chests devoid of hair, but festooned with tattoos and gold chains. None of them seems able to figure out where the bill on a baseball cap belongs.

The advertising message seems designed to promote one of two basic attitudes for dealing with life: 1) Buy me, I'm lots of fun and I'm yours, or 2) I'm really bad, man, so don't mess with me--unless you've got a lot of money that is, in which case we can talk. To achieve these effects, the models are posed in one of two attitudes: either wildly, deliriously happy, usually jumping and kicking their legs in the air, always with their heads thrown back and their hair blowing in a breeze created by an off-camera fan, or they are scowling menacingly into the lens with an I-dare-you-to-even-think-about-messing-with-me expression.

The purpose of all this seems to be to create the impression that if you wear the clothes or use the product, you, too can be perpetually in the mood to mate or fight or both.

In any city, if you know the right streets to cruise, you can find boys and girls who dress and paint themselves like the ads. The fashion industry did not create that look; they merely copied it from those pathetic, confused, abused, scared, street kids who are trapped in a desperate world that they don't know how to escape. But seen up close, they are not the fresh-faced, smooth-skinned, pouty-mouthed youngsters that scowl menacingly out at us from the fashion pages; rather they have faces that are old beyond their years, faces scarred by the pain and squalor that they endure.

Teenagers are, almost by definition, such vulnerable beings; it seems a shame to increase their burdens by letting them be exploited by these sharks. Their message is aimed at those most susceptible to peer pressures and the need to conform, and they seem intent on making everyone look like hookers.

If we really want to end sex discrimination and exploitation, we could start by telling these fashion jerks to take a hike.

There.

I feel better now.

I warned you that I was a fuddy-duddy.