In Defense of Fug

Ann Bartow is accusing fans of Go Fug Yourself -- the world's greatest blog -- of misogyny, superficiality, meanness. And, to be fair, she's right on two out of three. But there's a tendency to confuse superficiality with misogyny, which it's not. The other day, halfheartedly searching for some imagery to shoehorn into a sentence, I made a crack about fat kids in a beauty pageant (something about low expectations, as I remember), only to be promptly accused of misogyny. Now, that line did no favors for my karmic debt, but it wasn't hateful to women. Having been a fat kid, I can assure you that hefty boys aren't help up as paragons of beauty themselves.

Go Fug Yourself seems to have spurred a similar conflation. Being critical of appearance could, I guess, be called "beautyism," and I'm perfectly willing to believe it morally suspect, but it's not a misogynistic practice. That various societal assumptions have forced unrealizable physical standards on women is regrettable, but it doesn't excuse festooning your hat with the world's largest feather or giftwrapping yourself. Indeed, GFY militates towards more achievable aesthetic standards, mocking mostly the ridiculously flamboyant outfits that use their inherent absurdity to unsubtly signal how mind-blowingly expensive they are. Add in that GFY takes particular glee in assaulting anorexia and plastic surgery, and you have some of the last good cops on the fashion force.

Via Angelica.