Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The Philosophy of Materialism and Dressing as a Visual Art

It would seem I have done it...I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch but hey, why not be happy for what I have accomplished. I have quit my 9-5 job and am now a full time writer, and yes, although I'm not writing anything amazing I am being paid to write...quite a feat by any measure, after all it took me 3 months of applying to get the job in the first place!

So now I also work from home, which means no more work clothes, never again will I wear a suit! So all those beautiful clothes I spent a fortune on on eBay will finally get worn, once the weather warms up that is. It is currently the coldest winter in 20 years, it's gotten down to 1 or 2 degrees celcius some days, and although to the Americans and Europeans reading this, that might not seem so bad I'm an Australian and I'm not used to it. It makes me want to crawl into a tracksuit and hibernate - which I find very depressing.

I've really gotten back into the whole Gothic thing again over the last few months of evolution I have been engaging in and searching a lot of Gothic websites and bloggs. During my meanderings I have found some amazingly humerous stuff. Check out this link if you want to soil yourself laughing http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2004/01/irresistible-dating-prospects-from.html and check out the rest of this guys site, he's a really humerous guy and an excellent writer to boot. Also check out his post on a Japanese sex shop he visited, it'll have you rolling on the floor with laughter...although it has nothing to do with the origianal direction I was heading in when I began this paragraph...I'm meandering.

Since the concept of escaping the narrow road and heading off a bit futher a-feild crossed my mind as a possibility the question of clothing came into my mind. You see, I love clothes. I don't just love any old clothes though, I'm not one of those girls who needs to go an and on about some pink skirt they bought which was the same as 1,000 others on the rack and had a little name on the tag which justifies the rediculous price. No, I like the kind of clothes that no one seems to wear anymore, things that are a bit different. I love Japanese inspired clothes and dark coloured velvets and Victorian inspired high neck lace shirts. I'm not saying any of this to make myself out as superiour, I don't feel that the clothing you wear has any value other than that you ascribe to it yourself. My point is that after buying all these gorgeous clothes I was too scared to wear any of them and I encountered a mysterous canundrum.

How does the non conformist rebel alone? That seems a silly question but I live in an area which is right on the division between a bourgeous area and a poor area and the local shops are mostly inhabited by bogans (look up in Wikipedia if you don't know what this means for a very humerous expaination) in Adidas jumpers and 50 Cent pants. I was at home by myself one day and decided to get dressed up for when my partner came back later so I got dressed in a black satin kimono top with a floral pattern and my floor length black velvet skirt but later, after waiting for quite a while I decided to pop to the shops. I was hit by a sudden burst of anxiety, I'd have to to get changed...of course I didn't, but I felt kind of anxious, as if I was back in high school and wearing the wrong outfit to casual day! Ten years ago, in the 90's, the period when I came of age, people dressed in all kinds of ways and no matter how weirdly I dressed I never felt uncomfortable. It's strange that although I don't choose my stlye of dress with any consideration of what others will think of it, and actually don't care, I feel a certain anxiety... as if I will be singled out for harrassment or something - even though I've never been harrassed due to the clothes I wear...ever. It's an undercurrent I can feel in the culture around me.

It seems as though people are becoming more and more alike and no one is using the art of dressing to demonstrate their individuality anymore. There are older people in tracksuits and jeans, young girls in "pretty" clothes, young guys with some neanderthal rappers' name all over their jeans and jackets, emo and "I can't believe it's not Punk" kids...and that's about it. It's as if everyone is turning into a uniformed sea of faces where as I remember a time when there was much more diversity.

However that might be nostalgia getting the better of me...anyway, I promise to tackle something a bit more substantial next time...