Fashion Versus Ideology
I kind of love twentysomethingtales. Her tumblr is very frank and open about her life, and she writes with an easy, economical and natural style.
Early this morning, after a bout of insomnia, she found herself thinking about her time in Paris. Somewhere in a Paris kitchen she found herself talking to an older French girl about their ambitions. The Parisian wanted to start a jewelry company, while twentysomethingtales wanted to start writing for women’s magazines. This prompted mockery from the Parisian.
“Are you serious? You want to write shitty crap for publications that make society a horrible place?” she said
The irony of that girl’s put down is that she was hardly working to make the world a better place, unless selling pretty bangles counts. (And maybe it does.) A girl who wants to start a jewelry company shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss a girl who wants to write for women’s magazines.
What’s more, it’s a subtle kind of sexism to believe that women’s magazines make the world worse while men’s magazines don’t. And by “men’s magazines” I don’t even mean GQ and Esquire, much less Playboy or the like. I mean even the news magazines and political commentary magazines. (Yes, I know women read these things but traditionally they were considered “men’s” magazines.) These often give people, especially men, the illusion of knowledge, allow them to have strongly formed opinions that they mistake for well-formed opinions.
In Plato’s dialog, “The Gorgias,” Socrates confronts a man named Gorgias, who is said to have taught the citizens of another city to be able to answer every question boldly. They have become the kind of people who lust after wisdom, according to the popular description of Gorgias’ accomplishment.
I hate to say this, but it helps to look at the ancient greek to understand why this is a put-down in Plato’s view. For Plato, philosophy (love of wisdom) is the highest human activity, and it’s basic cognitive activity is questioning. It involves an awareness of the permanent questions of human being. But Gorgias hasn’t make people philosophers. He has taught them philo-erasty. The greek word for a desirous, lusty seducer is erastes. He has made the citizens erastics for wisdom.
Too often we fall into the same trap, mistaking identifying the problem of ignorance with finding a solution to it. We’re very down on ignorance but forget that the alternative is often arrogance rather than knowledge.
Uhm, I forget where this was going. Oh, right. I’m not sure that magazines which encourage women to concentrate on fashion or beauty are worse than magazine that encourage men to become dogmatically ideological about things that they don’t really have much influence over, don’t really effect their lives that much and may distract them from their friends and family. Actually, if the end effect is to make women pretty and men politically committed beyond warrant, I’m pretty sure women’s magazines are better.
