Fashion makes me furious. It always has. This summer we're all going to be wearing vermilion, are we? Says ? When we see a bikini made of squares of brightly colored plastic, why do we pretend anyone will wear it? Because, I snarled at Nina, this is what capitalism does to show off. It's our culture flopping out its dick. "Hey, you shadows in the non-English-speaking choas — just at our surplus capacity. If we can piss all this time and effort away on such vacant crap, just the gold and guns and grain we must have stashed away, how well fed and happy the citizens of Our World, Inc., must be." Except they happy, and some of them aren't even very well fed — but nobody knows or cares what happens back behind these billboards for a better way of life, because life for the people who matter just keeps getting better. The whole country is turning into a muffin-padded panic room where MBAs and soccer moms sit reading books on how to love themselves more, as if that could even be remotely . They've turned smoky, cool coffee shops into places where the perky go to iBook the novel that will prove just how sensitive they are; made fuggy, scary bars into places that feel like Employee Relaxation Facilities of forward-thinking megacorporations. I was in a bar recently and it smelled of — how fucked up is that? Not smelling of cigarettes is bad enough , but ? Inside is not supposed to be fresher than outside, can't they that? You can't stop being afraid just by pretending everything that scares you isn't there.
Michael Marshall Smith
