The Guardian's latest grievance nonsense. Fashion writers are dismissed, while sports writers are (apparently) lauded as intellectuals.

lostapwbm · 2016-04-30T18:34:55+00:00

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

-Oscar Wilde

The five S’s of sports training are: stamina, speed, strength, skill, and spirit; but the greatest of these is spirit.

– Ken Doherty

There is absolutely no argument to be made that sport is more cerebral than fashion – indeed, one could argue that kicking a ball around is a great deal less cerebral...

Fashion, at its best, is about (mainly female) self-expression, which is why, when people try to use it to put me down, I express myself pretty damned freely.

And this is why you are dismissed, cupcake. The value of your "self-expression" is pure subjective in the absence of being measured by what anyone is willing to pay for it. That extends to the clothes on your back or the drivel you ejaculate for Guardian readers.

The fastest man in the world is the fastest man in the world. The highest scoring soccer player in the world is the highest scoring soccer player in the world. The boxer with a perfect record has a perfect record.

The value of "self-expression" and "fashion" is subjective. Sports and sport skills can be objectively measured, assessed, analyzed, and discussed rationally.

rossraskolnikov · 2016-04-30T19:16:28+00:00

There is absolutely no argument to be made that sport is more cerebral than fashion – indeed, one could argue that kicking a ball around is a great deal less cerebral – but an interest in sport is seen as no bar to intelligent thought, while an interest in fashion is taken as proof of a girly-twirly cotton brain. Dozens of straight men over the years have told me how much they love The Devil Wears Prada. It seems to be the straight man’s approved romcom – and this doesn’t surprise me, because the whole point of that film is to mock female fashion journalists.

I was thinking of The Devil Wears Prada before she mentioned it. It's a shit film aimed at the kind of girls and young women who see Sex in the City as aspirational. And the point isn't to mock female fashion journalists. On the contrary. The plot involves a journalism student with intellectual pretensions who's disappointed to be assigned to an internship on a fashion magazine which she sees as superficial fluff. In the two minute scene that's the only thing worth watching in the film, her boss picks up on her eyerolling, and puts her in her place, while making the case for fashion journalism being Serious and Important. And then the girl learns that she doesn't have to choose between being smart and being pretty, or between taking herself seriously and going shopping, she can Have It All.

And as for male sportswriting being taken seriously, this isn't the case in the UK, which doesn't have the American tradition of college graduates aspiring to be Grantland Rice. It's changed a bit in the past generation where everyone pretends to be democratic about sports, but if an oldschool sportswriter (and there are still plenty of them around) turns up at the office of the Guardian, trailing cigarette butts and bookies' slips, and every time he opens his mouth betraying the working/lower middle class origins he shares with sports fans and his schooling that ended at 16, he's not going to be taken seriously either by the Serious Journalists on the politics desk or by the posh ladies on the fashion desk.

aokusman · 2016-04-30T19:31:24+00:00

How can a body shape be unrealistic when there are hundreds of thousands of athletes with that body shape? Another cry baby article. If women take fashion and beauty seriously its patriarchy, if they don't it's also patriarchy.

Sasha_ · 2016-04-30T22:25:02+00:00

Surely though, the fact that articles written about fashion and feminism attract more blocked comments could show that these subjects attract more haters, or it could show that moderators and writers on these subjects are more determined to silence legitimate criticism.

I'm not massively interested in fashion or sport, but I respect both as being multi-billion dollar industries with enormous economic and social importance.

Title	The Guardian's latest grievance nonsense. Fashion writers are dismissed, while sports writers are (apparently) lauded as intellectuals.
Author	rossraskolnikov
Upvotes	6
Comments	6
Date	April 30, 2016 4:24 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/4h52kc/the_guardians_latest_grievance_nonsense_fashion/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-guardians-latest-grievance-nonsense-fashion.950544 https://theredarchive.com/post/950544

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