Why Should I Care?

Watching, , pondering, and writing about the latest example of aggressive woke marketing (Jaguar), I got to wondering about the broader purpose of such campaigns. The anointed classes will tell us it's about teaching us to accept those who are different, about overcoming bigotries and cultural biases, but the message is never that neutral. It's not a call for inclusion and acceptance as much as it is a demand for celebration.

To which, I reply, "why should I care?"

Some decades back, when we would get our comedy on vinyl records rather than via Internet videos, I had a Robin Williams album where one bit included him imitating a stoner calling out "Go for it. Take a fashion risk."

The latter phrase stuck in my head. It was clearly a reference to something, but it only occurred to me in writing this bit to look it up.

Google AI informed me that:

The phrase "take a fashion risk" may have originated from a mirror in Joshua Tree, California that had the message written on it. Photographer Jamie Pearl captured the mirror on 35mm film as a way to capture the town's creative spirit and call to self-expression.

OK, I get it. Cutting-edge art, which includes fashion, requires risks. I recall reading some car designer noting that if a new design isn't jarring on first look, it's going to fade into boringness and obscurity very quickly. Boldness catches the eye, and in catching the eye stimulates the brain.

Not always for the better, it must be said.

Just because some fashion designer comes up with a new look doesn't mean that new look is a winner.

In a scene from The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly was being shown a designer's new offerings, and Stanley Tucci was explaining to Anne Hathaway what to look for:

Nigel: There's a scale. One nod is good, two nods is very good. There's only be one actual smile on record and that was Tom Ford in 2001. If she doesn't like it she shakes her head. Then of course there's the pursing of the lips.

Andy Sachs: Which means?

Nigel: Catastrophe.

New isn't always better. Different isn't always better.

Woke, however, insists that they are. We are supposed to welcome and celebrate new and different, no matter our personal opinions. If we don't, we get called bigots, haters, and intolerants by people who consider themselves better and more enlightened than us.

This is not the way. This is not how an inclusive society operates.

Inclusiveness means "you are free to do what you want as long as you don't demand my approval or applause. I am free to think what I want as long as I don't coerce you to behave as I wish."

Want to get a bunch of tattoos? Doesn't faze me, and ink done right can look great. Some disagree, and everyone's line between "great" and "what were you thinking?" is different.

I think the first two looks are great looks, while the third is a mess. YMMV, of course.

Point is, they don't need my validation. Yes, people value compliments and positive opinions, but if those are elevated to the point that their self-worth requires them, they are setting themselves up for victimhood.

All they need from me is a lack of interference.

Go, live your life as you will. It's a big country and a big world, you will find plenty of like-minded people. You should expect the freedom to live that life absent interference. As Thomas Jefferson observed nearly 250 years ago, you have the right to pursue happiness.

If, however, your happiness relies on an expectation of celebration from me, you are not only externalizing what should be an internal pursuit, you are violating my freedom. I have the right to have a negative opinion about the rightmost photo, I have a right to find the Jaguar ad laughable, and I have a right to argue that androgyny and gender-fluidity aren't de facto better than traditional heterosexuality. Different, sure, and again, I don't have to care one whit about how you dress, the image you put forward in the world, who you're attracted to, or anything about you. All I have to do is leave you be.

And all you have to do is leave me be. If you don't like my opinion, you are free to disregard it. But, if your reaction to an opinion you don't agree with is to declare bigotry and hatred...

Go ahead, make your case. Yes, bigotry and hatred exist in society. Human nature evolves very slowly, so bigotry and hatred will alway exist. If you have a sound argument that my dismissal of the Jaguar ad is rooted in some personal -ism, I'll give it a listen. But, if your argument is about my failure to elevate the "different" above all else, you are the one engaging in -isms. So, I'll apply Hitchens' Razor and get on with my life.

That's the libertarian way. Unfortunately, people tend to react, Newton's Third Law-style, when pressed or pressured in a way that rankles. This is why woke excesses are harmful rather than simply laughable. If inclusion and acceptance are the goals, demands that those in the minority and on the fringes be elevated above all else slow or undo the trend toward inclusion and acceptance.

The insistence that we elevate the new and different above the 'usual' also creates bad incentives. Give people the impression that they're more apt to be embraced if they go 'different' and you prompt things like people going to ever-greater appearance extremes, the trans mania that has infected teens, and woke parents telling the world that their seven year old tomboys are trans.

You also get temper tantrums when the demands and soft coercion don't work. I call this past election The Great Rejection. It was not just a rejection of the Political Left, but of the Cultural Left as well.

In response, we have American women declaring their own version of Korea's 4B movement, telling the nation's men that they will not date men, get married, have sex with men, or have children with men.

Well, good for you. Have fun with that. Heterosexual men thank you for preemptively removing yourselves from consideration and thus saving them from the risk of entering into relationships that would surely turn out toxic.

I close with a quote from the song Cut My Hair by The Who, off the magnificent Quadrophenia:

Why should I care
If I have to cut my hair?
I've got to move with the fashion
Or be outcast

It's a reality that society pressures us to fashion conformity. Fashion, however, is always changing, and while it is also often circular (old becomes new again), those at its leading edge can achieve success, recognition, and the satisfaction that comes from them. That satisfaction is most honest when the success and recognition are offered freely. If the success and recognition are coerced, however, does the risk taker actually gain anything real?

Should we be scolded into buying Jaguars by someone who won't grant us the freedom to have our own opinions?