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I learned very early on that following The Fashion just wasn’t worth the hassle and that it just didn’t deliver what it promised. When I was three years old, I thought it would be super cool to have spiky hair. And for the first little while, it was cool. But every day, I had sit still for 5 whole minutes (a very long time for a young boy) while my mom applied the required gel to my hair to get it to stay in place. Those 5 minutes seemed to get longer and longer, until they stretched out into eternity. And was I rewarded with a new, more exciting life? Were my latent super powers suddenly unleashed due to my fantastically awesome hair? No. All I got for my unfathomable patience was a few seconds of a visual in the mirror only to go the rest of my day without looking at myself, not really caring what was on top of my head.

I very quickly dropped the ‘cool’ hair style and adopted the one I still wear today. I call it ‘short’. It looks the same every single morning, no matter how I sleep. It looks the same throughout the day, no matter how much wind there is. If you wake up a mere 5 minutes earlier each day to fix your hair, each year I get to sleep in a full 30 hours more than you. No muss, fuss, money-gobbling-products, worry, or stress. It is low maintenance and efficiency at its peak.

I apply this early lesson any time I encounter The Fashion. What would I gain? What would it cost? What are the odds this will deliver anything close to what The Fashion is promising? As anyone with a hint of practicality might imagine, The Fashion does not win out on very many of these cost/benefit analyses.

Of course, applying critical thought to The Fashion is quite unfashionable. Dressing according to utility will rarely earn you compliments and even sometimes elicit scorn. The Fashion is a greedy, non-sensical, evil, duplicitous, money-grab run by people who don’t care about you, your health, or your looks.

“What, what? When I listen to The Fashion, I look and feel good. So do millions of others. Back up your claim, you nay-sayer you!”

Glad you asked.

There are countless examples of The Fashion being a superficial waste of materials. I mean, who came up with ties? They don’t cover anything, and they certainly don’t keep you warm. But the example I want to look at makes it blatantly obvious that the rules of fashion are not only indifferent towards utility, but also contrived primarily to conjure up an imaginary need just so they can sell you useless crap. Here it is:

In N.America, The Fashion has a lot to say about skin tone. Tan is healthy. Tan is beautiful. Tan is sexy. Pale is sickly! Look at all of our starlets in movies with tans. Models in our ads have tans. We have tanning beds, tanning oils, tanning salons, tanning magazines, tan tan tan tan tan tan!

In Asia, The Fashion also has a lot to say about skin tone. Pale is healthy. Pale is beautiful. Pale is sexy. Tan is dirty! Look at all of their starlets in movies with pale skin. Models in their ads have pale skin. They have skin-whitening ointments, skin-whitening moisturizers, skin-whitening make-up, pale pale pale pale pale!

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