Personal aesthetics tend towards the value-neutral. Often they result from no conscious judgment whatsoever (cf. Wal-Mart chic as an imposition of economic conditions). On occasion we see positive assertions in fashion—allegiance to a sports franchise, membership in a subculture, identification with a particular musical genre—though these are morally silent. Even rarer in fashion is the work of the negative. The punk rocker’s aesthetic is a certain type of negation, though one whose sole function is to establish an asymmetry—and therefore a point of distinction—among all other available aesthetic options.
So far as I can tell there is only one aesthetic in which we see the work of a morally infused negative. It is unclassifiable in the same way pornography was to Justice Stewart—you know it when you see it—but those who pull it off are driven to do so out of a fierce anti-intellectualism. For women it will often assume the form of exceptionally tight Express jeans, clearance sale ankle-strap woven wicker wedges, inhumanly sculpted eyebrows, large hoop earrings and bad mascara. They’re often seen with men in poorly fitted and badly patterned gabardine shirts with wide collars and non-sequitur French cuffs, spiked hair held erect by cheap product, finely manicured hints of facial hair (chin straps, soul patches, etc.), gold-plated necklaces and exuberantly over-sized stainless steel watches.
It’s an aesthetic which says: I haven’t handled so much as a mass-market paperback since turning in my Lord of the Flies book report in ‘94. And I’m fucking proud of it.
filialpiety: you, sir, suffer with too much pride
