My Fashion Police
13 October 2003 

When I started this blog, I promised “my cranky aesthetic judgements” as part of it. So now I will carry through on this, and probably alienate many of the women in the blogging community. So I must begin with two important, and possibly contradictory, warnings:
1. These are aesthetic, not moral judgements. Some people might make moral judgements about these matters, but I would like to make clear that I distinguish between offending my tastes and offending Divine Law.
2. The previous statement notwithstanding, my emotional attachment to my aesthetic judgements is very strong. I guess this is true for all us fallen men. We care more about things that are ultimately of no importance and neglect the things that are truly important. So exposing my cranky aesthetic judgements to public ridicule may be a valuable spiritual exercise.
Piercing: I do not understand the current fashion among young (and not so young) people for piercing anything that sticks out even slightly and inserting ironmongery into it. Is this supposed to be beautiful? I find it somewhere between ridiculous and disgusting, especially when it involves the inward parts of various orifices. Nor could it possibly be very healthy, although that by itself would not make it unattractive.
Tattoos: The same thing goes for tattooing, although I realize that the custom of tattooing is very old and widespread among the kind of people we called savages before the days of political correctness. I understand that tattoos in many cultures have some kind of religious significance, which is why the Israelites were forbidden to have them (Lv 19:28). Christians are not bound by the kosher laws, but I find such decorations silly and unattractive. There is a young lady who works in my office, who is a decent, serious, hardworking person with great prospects. She is, I have to admit, quite attractive and even generally quite modest. But she has a tattoo on her arm of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice. For a young person, that might be amusing; but when she is a professional of some standing, perhaps a mother as well, how will that look? Not to mention that the design itself fades and blurs, and often in old age the flesh sags: then it will be even more repulsive.
Now to get to the part that is really going to offend people.
Makeup: I used to be an actor (in my youth), and we had to wear makeup on stage in order to provide various effects under the bright lights. When I was twelve, for example, I had lines drawn on my face and a false beard to play an old man, which I was told I did very well. (Couldn’t wait to be the age I am now, I guess.) The whole point of stage makeup is to look natural, if different. Unless you are playing commedia dell’arte, you don’t really want the makeup to show. So why do women think that makeup that looks obviously artificial is attractive? Normal lips are not bright scarlet or waxy white; people do not have green circles under their eyes. The kind of makeup worn by models in fashion shows, that makes them look like week-old corpses, has no possible excuse. But the supposedly normal woman whose skin is encased in some substance that looks like plastic, so that you could not tell her from a store mannequin if she were standing still, is not much better. I would say, “No makeup that can be seen” and that goes double for
Nail polish, which I particularly detest. I find it exceedingly repulsive, especially since I think a woman’s hands are her most attractive feature. I once saw a very amusing essay by E.B. White in which he compared some women’s impulse to deface their beautiful hands with lacquer to painting designs on the shell of a turtle. To think that colored substances, and worse yet, artificial extensions, improve the appearance of a woman’s hands is like thinking the prospect of the Grand Canyon would be improved by building a McDonald’s in front of it. When I was a bachelor, if I saw a young lady wearing nail polish I would immediately scratch her off my list of prospects, since I knew I could not stand to look at it. If I had prospects now I would do the same. Enough of this; I’m beginning to get nauseous.
Hair coloring: God so arranges every part of the body that it is in harmony with respect to shape and color: that is what we mean by beauty. Therefore the color of the skin, the eyes, and the hair are most beautiful when they are harmonious. So why do women have the notion that changing the color of their hair can make them more beautiful? There are a lot of things you can do with hair; but coloring it artificially is guaranteed to put it out of harmony with the rest of the body. As one grows older, the hair turns gray; this is normal and should not be fought. A mature woman who tries to have the hair of a teenager is not attractive, but ridiculous. (A man who does this is even more ridiculous!)
Women’s clothing: I could say a lot about women’s clothing that would get into the area of modesty, which is moral rather than merely aesthetic. But the most ludicrous piece of women’s fashion is high-heeled shoes. Women even admit that they are uncomfortable, but they feel compelled to wear them. They are perhaps the Western equivalent of the old Chinese custom of footbinding. Wearing them makes women uncomfortable: bound feet led to a lifetime of pain and impaired movement. Both give women a wobbling, swaying walk that is supposed to be sexually attractive. Here at least is one man who does not prefer that a woman should torture herself to give him erotic fantasies. She can do that well enough by a natural smile.

I wonder if most men find the ridiculous things that women do actually attractive. Perhaps women do not adorn themselves to attract men, but for their own or one another’s amusement. And of course, I’m sure that no woman would want to attract me. So perhaps they can do all the things I have listed above so that they can be sure to repel me. So, ladies, you’re on notice: if you want to keep me away—you know what to do