January 26th, 2004
Have you ever noticed that there's an aggression attached to upscale and trendy? It's a feeling of danger and abuse, and there are two ways to respond:
- Belly up to the table and slap your own meat onto it, i.e., keep up with the Jones' (works just as long as there are Jones' around to be trendier and more upscale than)
- Run run run away!
As you may have already experienced, there's no ignoring it. That's the way with most cultural aggression: If you stand around minding your own business, the schoolyard bully of popular culture will come over and knock your feet out from under you.
In short, popular trend is a very large set of brass knuckles worn by those who bought into the myth. Now that they're there, they aren't worth the face value of a SkyTrain ticket unless they can slap you silly with their posing and fashion/habitual/ideological fists.
It amazes me to no end how many cycles and loops one can twist oneself into in the pursuit of trendiness ... and there is no final resting state of ultimate trendy; you never "get there" because there is always someone you perceive as trendier and more fashionable than yourself ... and as a consequence, you must always seek out someone less trendy than yourself and slap them around a bit with some posing of your own. (Actually, that very concept alone should be the definition of abuse: Always someone higher on the totem pole, always someone lower.)
* * *
Why am I on about this? Well, it's just that my new contract is in an area of Vancouver known as Yaletown, and this area is generally agreed on by the trend-chasers as an upscale trendy area.
Lots of people are walking around trying very hard to NOT look as though they are being trendy, which is in itself trendy. Oh, so much trouble for so little gain! And the worst part is, everybody else is so busy trying hard not to look like they are being trendy that they don't notice anyone else who is being trendy by not trying to look trendy.
And if your response to that is, "Well, I'm not trying to do that!" then be aware you have just performed an act of aggression.