Tanya Gold is a very angry woman. “Why I hate fashion” she screams in The Guardian, but it sounds to me like what she actually hates is high-heeled shoes and the people who make young models miserable. It’s the fashion industry that is sometimes questionable (like a great many industries these days), but not fashion itself. You don’t have to buy magazines, adopt trends that don’t suit you, or wear heels in the snow to be fashionable.
The girl she mentions (Megan Moore, who died while running in heels), was simply unfortunate rather than ‘killed by fashion’, which was what Gold is insinuating. Anyway, most of the ‘fashionable’ types I’ve seen out and about during January’s worst snow and ice were wearing stupidly absorbent but rather more practical Uggs or, better still, wellies.
It’s a shame that, even though Tanya is now happy enough with herself to not feel the need to follow fashion without question, she still feels the need to write about it in such a hateful manner. There are a great many bad things about an industry which perpetuates the idea that we all need to be young and slender in order to be successful and popular, but surely we need to be positive about the alternatives rather than simply sitting back and being bitchy? There are many brands and trends which are suited to ‘real’ people, so I don’t understand why she’d spend years buying things that don’t fit or suit her and then wonder why it didn’t make her happy. Sounds like fashion wasn’t the root of that particular problem.
Image via Emilio Labrador‘s Flickr photostream.
It strikes me as like the rabid anti smokers who turn out to be ex smokers themselves.
Maybe the only way to cure yourself of the ridiculous obsessive behaviour that would lead you to buy things that don't suit you is to state your hatred of it and all it involves?
You know, I think you could be right 🙂