What Not To Wear

I don't know what I think about this show. It's really borderline offensive. The show is a bit like Queer Eye except mostly focused on how a person is dressed, most specifically women.

In this particular episode that I stumbled on, it was about a slightly heavy-ish, very busty blond. In particular, the show was making a point of how to dress when you have larger than average breasts. She had left Oklahoma and headed to New York, but wasn't happy with the way she looked. The hosts of the show were going to give her advice on how to look better from clothing to haircut to shoes.

Of course, the real problem with this is price. They let her go on a shopping spree in New York, and she spent over a thousand dollars getting clothing, while pretty much jettisoning out all her clothing. In other words, she probably went from clothing that was 40-50 dollars up to 150-200 dollars, easily quadrupling the cost of the clothing. And that's not all. They suggested she have most of her clothing tailored, which, alas, in the US, ain't free. This can be a significant percentage of the clothing too, likely to boost it another 10% or more.

While the hosts seemed a little surprised how much she spent (though they probably gave her quite the budget to spend), they probably did so to seem concerned about the clothing's cost, even as they, themselves, wouldn't bat an eye on the expense of clothing.

In fact, the only place I've seen it worse is watching Kornheiser and Wilbon on their Washington Post sports segment (called Talking Points), were Kornheiser frequently talks about how much Cindy Boren (a sports editor) is spending on her clothing. She frequently has clothing in the several hundred dollar range. Meanwhile, Wilbon, being the well-paid man he is, dresses even more expensively. He commented that he hadn't spent less than three hundred dollars on shoes in a long time, and has a fondness for Italian leather.

Now, it certainly makes sense that more expensive clothing would make you look better, but shows like these encourage people who already spend a lot of money on clothing to take it up several notches. I understand the feeling. I buy kitchen equipment. The average cost of this stuff is relatively cheap, in the forty dollars or less range.

But the really good stuff is really expensive. An affordable knife might be 10 or 20 dollars. A top-notch one, more than one hundred dollars. A whole set can put you back several hundred dollars. On the other hand, if I bought that, I would likely never have to replace it. At the very least, I could keep it more than a decade.

This clothing is likely to be old in 2-3 years, and again, the spending goes on.

I will say that they didn't mention one thing that would have been a sensitive part. She probably could lose weight by doing more exercise. However, the show realizes its audience doesn't always have perfect figure, and that it's easier (if more expensive) to wear "better" clothing than to get in better shape (indeed, if some of this money went to a personal trainer--but I digress).

Indeed, most clothing experts are generally out there not just to improve your look, but to up the cost of your look, to push how much you spend to outrageous amounts (amounts they consider acceptable to look that good).

The show is, of course, between a rock and a hard place. They want people to look good, but they don't care if this puts them in the poorhouse. And the people who watch see it as a kind of fantasy, that spending money will make everything work out. It's an attitude not shared by a lot of the world where feeding yourself is as much as one can hope for. Such shows encourage that people look bad, and thus, spend the money to look better.

I can't say I'm completely immune to this, because I'm certainly not, but certainly people look at spending money to fit in their social crowd. And is that a message we should be sending?