Fashion and Other Things

In this digital age, physical communication still retains a certain punch. So when I walked into Point du Jour today and saw a sign that declared “THM IS NOT HAPPY!”, I was highly intrigued. When I found out about the actual origins of the sign—and others; it was not the only one—I knew that this was a good story.

Here’s how it went down. The studio is divided between freelancers and contract-workers. They work on different shows; they work on different floors. And they work under different rules: in France, it’s extremely annoying to fire workers, to the point that employers will avoid hiring people, or hiring temps, or using unpaid interns, whatever, to avoid taking on permanent weight that may or may not provide its own propulsion. In real-life terms, this means that the freelancers, in exchange for greater flexibility of choosing projects, are far easier to fire. This part all makes logical sense to me—obviously the system is quite strange, but you can understand the incentives.

Now, at this point in the story, you will see the effect of misaligned incentives. The overarching company did not perform up to expectations—while the freelancers were pulling their own weight, the contract workers (apparently) were not really doing much of anything. But—and this is the hilarious part—someone needed to be fired in order to cut costs, and since the only people who could be fired were the freelancers, they were the ones scheduled to be shipped out and replaced by the contract workers, to the point of the boss approaching the receptionist while she was on break and informing her, after an exchange of “Ca va?”s, that she was fired.

This approach might have worked in the United States—everyone expects lay offs; apparently the boss expected the individual workers to be more worried about their own jobs rather than the collective injustice at hand. This was not the case. Threats of collective resignations were offered, and signs of protest were plastered against the window facing the boss’ office. It was all averted; today, the champagne flowed.

****

Fashion is a strange god. At times, it will make a decision for no reason and with no recognition of reality and expect all its adherents to change without delay. Sometimes this is a curse—I am of course referring to the (hopefully by now passé, the four months’ ex-pat says to himself) leggings fad. At other times, like, oh I don’t know, right now, it is a blessing.

For whatever reason, booty shorts that look like shortened slacks have become not just respectable office and street wear, but also somewhat fashionable, to the point that young women emerging from offices are liable to cause whiplash in all but the gay and blind. For young men—like me—this can only be viewed as a positive development.

On the other hand, it’s not arctic but it’s certainly chilly in Paris, so I can’t see this as a particularly comfortable development. So what else is new, ask females? Nothing, is the answer—it is another in a long line of fashion developments that look good but (I presume) are uncomfortable. And judging from the way they are described, I would think that high heels are the crack cocaine of the female half of the human race: they hurt so much, and yet…!

The attitude that women profess, especially about high heels, some strange alchemy of aesthetic appreciation and awful oppression, is completely alien to most guys, who rarely if ever purposefully wear uncomfortable clothing on a daily or near-daily basis. I guess some people find suits and dress shirts uncomfortable, but that is pretty rare.

So I guess we can probably blame the patriarchy or something like that. I mean, it’s the most logical thing: it’s much more important for women to be pretty than it is for men. And even being pretty is a trap because then lots of dudes will merely think about you in terms of being really hot. So it’s a dilemma.

I won’t pretend to have a solution, because it seems like a pretty useless edict to ask men to not think of women sexually. So maybe the solution is to ask men not to let their sexual thinking to overwhelm their other logical thinking, which is reasonable and all, but we (meaning humans) are not ruled by our reason that too will be incomplete. Meanwhile, I have to nurse my whiplash.

****

I’m going to a European soccer game tomorrow. Meanwhile, Stanford plays Those Other Guys—you know, that school that claims, improbably, to represent all of California—tomorrow. This edition of the Big Game is the 119th, give or take a few rugby games.

Many people like to speak of college football as the ultimate fan experience that American sports has to offer. Certainly the experience of joining the pilgrimage off of Berkeley’s BART stop towards Memorial Stadium—aptly named, since it is as odd and antiquated as whatever it memorializes—and marching with that mass of humanity was one of those moments where you feel profoundly a part of everyone around you (which was weird, seeing as the majority of people were Cal fans and therefore insulted us relentlessly) in contrast to the solitude in crowds that is most people’s quotidian existence.

But, for all the grousing that cultural critics level against American’s sports obsession, Europeans take sports far, far more seriously. For example, in England, the percentage of pages devoted to sports was much greater than the number in the United States. More people wore soccer jerseys and more people sported scarves. Similarly, when France was winning in the Rugby World Cup (a minor star in the European galaxy of sports), each game was like a Big Game (admittedly a minor star in the galaxy of rivalry games).

And yet, Europeans don’t seem to be a continent of slack-jawed yokels; similarly, whatever flaws Americans have in citizenship, I don’t think they stem from outsized devotion to sports. (I could argue about why, but this is another subject altogether, so I will merely say that the critics who complain about sports are more often than not trying to reorient scrutiny from themselves, where, as a group, it belongs).

It’s perfectly natural that people should love sports so much. It showcases beautiful aesthetics and, often shows a morality play on our own frailties and triumphs. With all that, with Michael Jordan battling to hit the perfect last shot, how can you resist? Sports explain itself.

There are those who complain about the relative esteem given to sports in our society relative to books, the arts, and other high-minded endeavors. The answer to that complaint is that those works often do not explain themselves; they are mysterious where sports are direct. Sports deliver emotional punches; too often I read a bad book brimming with turgid banalities and overdone situations and wander where the novelty is. It’s not that I don’t love all these things; I do. It’s just that people are often unfair and I want to make an effort to explain where I can, which is everyone’s duty to one another.