Fifty-Two: Not Aesthetica (10-06-2023)
Twitter's perennial obsession with "return"-esque reminiscent imagery, is, by most real analysis, a non-issue in the larger culture war. Yearning to be a WASPy New England family poses no threat the larger order when the most you can muster is generic appeals to the universal desire for wealth. Twitter is not the grand agora that doomsayers wish it was, it played an measurably minor role in the promotion and election of Donald Trump. Frog memes don't sway hundreds of millions the way the cyber sphere would make you believe.
Coldhealing is a twitter account dedicated to the neutral archiving of tik tok aesthetica, mostly young (14-29) people's self expression and vain attempts to categorize their visible and physical world. There's a fantasy play in most of the inventory, where a listless young person, brutally aware of their life's ubiquity, applies language and reinterpretation, usually borrowed from fiction, to comfort themselves with the thought of profundity. Is your dream vacation or travel destination simply a reflection of your personal tastes? No, you're participating in a meta-cultural phenomenon and wouldn't last a day in LA.
There's also the case of a small dozens of menswear accounts that promote a return to 1950s-1990s slightly-below-professional dress, heavy cotton polo oxfords, tassle loafers, wool blend trousers, et cetera. I won't link any of these accounts, they're easy enough to find and I'm resisting the temptation to mock them because they're right. I feel like I've written about the following observation before, because it's a thought that plagues me, but nevertheless: people really did used to wear button down shirts and leather shoes (not sneakers) everywhere. Mechanic's overalls have collars on them. While the contemporary office environment does maintain the semi-professional dress in contrast to an increasingly casual social sphere, most places would be better served were the clientele to dress themselves in at least a button down casual shirt and trousers. I, as well as others, am sick of seeing hoodies and sweatpants everywhere.
Oh the scourge of the sweatpant. The dastardly cookie monster pajamas and neff snapback combo is an understanded signifier of the lower class, really the lowest class, but sweatpants and gym clothes, to a social outing, is not oft maligned among the seemingly socially-adept. Avoiding the urge to appeal to strongly to the feeling disintegration of culture, of grey androgyny festering among us, it seems disrespectful to those around you to not present yourself to the best of your ability. A Supreme sweatsuit may be fashionable, but if your friend wore a shirt with a collar and shoes, not sneakers, you probably should elevate to that level. It's all signaling, about priorities and interests, and the common choice among the young or trendy is to signal a laissez-faire attitude toward presentation.
There is a a way to take formal aesthetics too far. Surrendering to monotony (in a big gray paper house) is a step in the wrong direction, actually. I always found the advice of "dress nice for work, but show personality! Wear a fun tie!" to be a strange contortion of the real rules of formal dress. My boss wears golf polos to work. Notwithstanding the anachronism of a polo for golfing, this is no different then showing up to work in a football jersey. Wearing a patterned shirt, an older shirt with quality material, pleated trousers, worn, beaten, Skull-and-Bones loafers, or any form of truly considered, non-department rack clothing is true violation of the expected corporate dress code.
The world will continue to march towards hedonistic comfort, and continue to reward lackadaisical social signaling. Whether there's a shadowy cabal encouraging the proletariat to not take themselves seriously enough (and never considering forming any solidarity with one another), or to make everything ugly and violate God's mandate for beauty, or whatever, it's still a painful truth that the world feels alien and isolating when everything is the same level of bland. Sweatpants are the easy way out.
So still, the youth's obsession with recontextualizing their existence, their pursuit of meaning in the meaningless, or to replicate the movies in real life, without the fancy clothes and perfect faces, is cute in the way a crippled dog is. The world has abandoned all meaningful aesthetic, and then handed addictive technology to serve out the maximum amount of perfect world imagery to young (and old) people. So when you say that your grocery list is some fanciful consideration and that you're more like a Parisienne because you buy fresh bread and like butter on toast for breakfast, you only serve to worsen the social malaise. Words are not actions. Put on some pants.