@futurebird @MisuseCase mmm, by perfectly adhering to the Drumpftian canons of feminine acceptability?

@futurebird @alec
I think people should do to their appearance whatever they like. But they should also do this understanding the context within which they are doing this. If they are doing this to make them feel better when they look at themselves, that's one thing. But if they are doing it because they want to appeal to someone else's aesthetic, then they should question why they're doing it at all.

In the case of these MAGA women and men (see Gaetz, Matt), who are they pleasing & why?

@futurebird @noodlemaz To add to this, it’s also very very geographical, both in terms of attention paid and where the attention is paid. Myrmepropagandist talking about it is what unlocked my awareness that this heightened attention is something all the contacts I have in NYC and surrounds have in common, probably thanks to continental European influence. I remember being astounded one trip to LA in the mid-aughts that the (straight) men dressed so lazily and shoddily - performatively so - when the women were so glamorous (both senses; lots of artifice.) Depending on where you live it might be no great concern outside of a job interview or upper level white collar professional setting to even be dressed up, let alone well-dressed.

But just because some people care and find a passion in it doesn’t obligate everyone to or set it as a mandate for individual happiness, even if you live in a high fashion area. Vehicles (but especially trucks) are the height of fashionable consumption here and I’m happier and better-off for deciding to not-care about those things no matter how conspicuous they make me, and with comfortable joy-of-missing-out on all the genuinely inventive and creative developments in the automotive space. I can literally bond with people here over not caring about cars, because it’s outlier-ish enough to be remarkable and suggest the contours of some specific priorities. Your consumption patterns can be a way to find your people.

@yuki2501 @futurebird @neckspike I was under the impression that the fox dress code was about Roger Ailes being a creep and every woman having to look like his ideal harassment target to increase his enjoyment of harassing them

@alec @futurebird Preemptive rave review - Cottom is the wit who pinned that blonde isn’t a hair color but a racial identity, which blew my brain open (and Money with Katie is usually interesting but I've been off podcasts as I don’t commute anymore) - thank you for linking!!

@futurebird @MisuseCase I mean to me it’s a very loud performance of high dollar consumption - demonstrating having resources of money and time in the first place like a good little inheritor-scion, and committing them to perform and performance of the politics of your gender over anything else you could possibly do with them. These people are fundamentally very calvinist (actual religiosity varies) and they need to demonstrate their deservingness of wealth by demonstrating that they burn through it with not clothing and cosmetics and coiffure but treatments and surgeries that *keep up with* a shifting aesthetic of the politicized female body, potentially hundreds of thousands a year.

@MisuseCase @futurebird

I saw a teenager dressed like a tiefling on a train once. Horns and skin dyed pink and all.

Wasn't even halloween or a convention or anything like that. Just a random day.

@cwicseolfor @futurebird I mean, valid! Also this aesthetic only really works for white or white-passing women, that’s a whole other layer.

@MisuseCase @futurebird When I said “good little inheritor-scion” I was thinking very deliberately about whose labor created what they were inheriting, and it wasn’t their own ancestors’.

@gbargoud @MisuseCase

“dressed like”

I mean. Kind of rude to assume it wasn’t natural. How do you know?

@cwicseolfor @fritzoids @MarvinFreeman @futurebird

Yeah, I think conspicuous consumption is at least part of what is going on.

Even if you turn out hideous, you are flaunting that you could afford so much work.

It would almost be a failure if the work was done well, because then people wouldn't notice.

@Phosphenes @fritzoids @MarvinFreeman @futurebird It’s a totally different definition of “done well.” But yeah, it’s all a very gaudy aesthetic, the ‘poor man’s idea of a rich man’ in distaff. It reminds me of what they were reflecting and lampooning with the mob-coded East Coast moms in films of the early 90s (think Matilda’s family in Leon: the Professional, or on the other end of the spectrum, the Rhea Perlman’s mother of Ronald Dahl’s Matilda.) Which makes sense; the head of the cult really just wants 1989 back.

@MisuseCase @futurebird

And here I thought it was just about truly terrifying lips.

@MisuseCase @futurebird The Tammy Faye Bakker look.

@futurebird i wish my problem was that my arms were too short! My arms are too long and there's nothing i can do about that besides getting a blazer custom made (or sewing one myself). Consequently, i own no blazers.

@futurebird Oh, I will absolutely make fun of the Mar-a-Lago face, and I think you should too.

Not because I think it's okay to criticize people (and especially women) for their appearance. But because they do. It's something that is important to them.

If you're the type of people who ties value to appearance and support fascism for its aesthetics, sure, the substantive thing to criticize is that you support fascism, and it should be said regardless of your appearance; but nevertheless, mocking your looks is fair game, because they're a direct consequence of your beliefs.

If you're a manly man who places a lot of importance in being masculine and are toxic because of that, it is fair game to say that you have small limp dick energy.

It's utterly ridiculous. In an ideal society nobody would say that. But in these people's bizarre, warped way of seeing the world, these insults make sense, and more than attacking characteristics they didn't choose, they attack their very views. Does that make sense to anyone else than me?

@futurebird I think this is a slight misread, based on what Dr. Cottom says about it.

Really high-end “work” is subtle, and people may wonder. The MAGA look is intentionally unsubtle. Cottom says it signifies submission. “I’m so all-in for Trump that I’ll go under the knife to look the way he likes.” And if everyone else thinks it’s hideous, that just makes the signal more expensive and therefore convincing.