Confessions of an Ex-Preppy

A couple of nights ago I was thinking about the cult of youth and celebrity that controls the mainstream fashion magazines, trying to figure out what’s my complex about anti-intellectuals and what’s objectively verifiable. I called magazine editors my “enemy,” and that’s a pretty strong word. Are they really my enemy? What’s the truth about magazine editors, and what’s just coming from the demons in my head?

Feeling insecure yet?

One advantage for the editors is that putting celebrities on covers provokes a response of insecurity in us. By setting the standard impossibly high — that all of us men should emulate eternally young alpha males — the editors increase our sense of unworthiness. This reminds me a bit of fundamentalist Christianity, where there is the deep feeling of unworthiness that comes when you realize that you will never measure up to God’s standards. In men’s fashion journalism there is the chronic feeling of unworthiness that comes when you realize that you will never achieve alpha male status. Forgive us, Most High Magazine Editors, for we have sinned. We have developed wrinkles and have not made our first million and haven’t achieved anything particularly noteworthy in your eyes. We are not worthy to grace thy covers.

Just as individuals can have complexes, so can cultures, and a feeling of unworthiness is one of Western civilization’s favorite cultural complexes. We’ve been working on that one for thousands of years. The editors of men’s fashion magazines and the advertisers who support them benefit financially from us feeling a constant sense of inferiority because then we’re that much more in need of their product. They appear to be selling information on fashion, but what they’re really selling is redemption. They say they can save us from our uncoolness, if we only listen to the word!

Only impatient Americans could believe that instant coffee could taste better than fresh coffee or that you could stock your closet in under an hour.

This month’s cover of Men’s Vogue has a headline that says, “STOCK YOUR CLOSET IN UNDER AN HOUR.” Instant salvation, my brothers! Somebody say amen! Man, I have totally been headed down the wrong track. I was thinking that my clothing might be an outward expression of my inner character, and that it was going to take a year or two to experiment and find out what kind of fashions are best for me, but now the editors of Men’s Vogue enlighten me that there’s no need for me to think deeply about what I should be wearing. I just need to thoughtlessly follow their formula. I’m sure it’s completely irrelevant that the clothes they recommend are made by the some of their biggest advertisers. The magazine editors are the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the fashion world. They are trying to convince me of my original sin — my inability to make fashion decisions for myself — and therefore of my dependence on them to show me the way.

The contents for Men’s Vogue has this intriguing item: “IN THE BAG: Three real men hunt for a fall wardrobe, returning spruced up and unscathed.” The mention of “real men” caught my eye. It’s a tacit admission that the boys they put on their covers aren’t real men but are artificially manufactured products of the U.S. celebrity-making machine. So I turned to page 124 to see what the editors of Men’s Vogue consider real men:

• an executive from the upper echelons of the New York art gallery world
• a 30-year-old venture capitalist who says, “on any given day, I might go from a formal board meeting to speaking at a conference to a casual meeting in a university lab with a Nobel Prize–winning scientist”
• a doctor in Manhattan who is married to an architect

Well, then. If you’re young, attractive, famous, and wealthy, then you’re cover material, but if you aren’t famous, then you’re just a “real man.” Not only am I not an alpha male, I don’t even qualify as a real man.

The most honest editors would say, “We’re not evil, just greedy. We put beautiful morons on our covers because it makes more money. We’re just giving people what they want.” True, but that is just the mindless mantra of corporate journalism. The editors are cowards. They do not hold themselves to the highest standards. They care more about their magazine’s sales and ad revenues than about fashion, which is just a way to make money for them.

The magazine editors may not be evil. But what is evil is the part of us that deals with insecurity by compensating in unhealthy ways: compensating for a small ego by building up one’s muscles into a grotesque caricature of a male body,¹ wearing puffy down jackets², or buying a Hummer³; compensating for the cowardice that led one to avoid National Guard service by cloaking oneself in the flag and invading another country based on lies; or compensating for one’s general insecurity as a man by mindlessly following the style choices of the editors of men’s fashion magazines.

Just a few of the ways the insecure male ego has found to compensate.

The magazine editors couldn’t manipulate people if they weren’t weak enough to be manipulated in the first place, like the people who think it makes God happy when they send money to multimillionaires such as Pat Robertson. There has been such a failure in this country to develop healthy models of masculinity that there are hundreds of thousands of men who mindlessly swallow the advice of magazine editors and advertisers who cynically appeal to their basest instincts.

Real men. Ha. The editors of Boy’s Vogue wouldn’t recognize a real man if he walked up and kicked them in the balls.

1. Note that I do not mean to imply that all bodybuilders have small egos. Only most of them. [↩]
2. Note that I do not mean to imply that all wearers of puffy down jackets are insecure, especially if said wearers are prone to pop a cap in my ex-preppy white ass. [↩]
3. Note that I definitely do mean to imply that anybody buying a Hummer has not only a small ego but also a small dick and absolutely no grasp of foreign affairs. [↩]

When I started my fashion education, I subscribed to GQ, Men’s Vogue, and Details. I have a love-hate relationship with these magazines. On the one hand, they are invaluable for expanding my fashion horizons beyond that of a Southern preppy with an unhealthy addiction to L.L. Bean. On the other hand they seem to be actively devoted to lowering my I.Q. If you are trying to get out of Mensa but are having trouble, subscribe to all three of these magazines for a while to lower your score.

All the covers have men who are young, attractive, famous, and wealthy. GQ has James Franco, a 30-year-old actor. Men’s Vogue has Eli Manning, a 27-year-old athlete. Details has Shia LaBeouf, a 22-year-old actor. Catherine recently told me that fashion magazines used to have anonymous models on the covers because the emphasis was on the clothes, but now it’s just celebrities, our modern recreation of the pantheon of Greek gods.

These morons are supposed to be my role models? Are you serious?

Here I am at age 43 getting interested in men’s fashion because of some character development in the pursuit of wisdom, and when I go to the editors of fashion magazines to see what they might teach me, they tell me to sit at the feet of pretty boys. These aren’t men. Why are boys monopolizing the covers of men’s fashion magazines?

There’s nothing wrong with youth, physical beauty, fame, or wealth. There’s not even anything wrong with all four in one person. (Are you listening God? I’m ready to win the lottery now. Oh, shit, I forgot — I don’t believe in God, do I. Damn.) But there is something unhealthy about being interested in only one model of masculinity. There are so many different ways to be a man. But our culture idolizes the ideal of the alpha male.

Think about all the people you personally know who are all of the following: young, attractive, famous, and wealthy. It’s probably zero, because an unbelievably small number of people have all four. But of the three men’s fashion magazines, not only do all three put such people on their covers, they do so for every single issue. This is totally unbalanced and unhealthy. I have known so many wonderful men in my life, and some have been alpha males, but most have not been.

What I would like to see on the covers of men’s fashion magazines is some variety. Sure, put pretty boys on the cover every now and then, just not every damn issue like this is some kind of Soviet dictatorship. This country has three separate major men’s fashion magazines, and they are all controlled by the same cult.

Fuck you editors of men’s fashion magazines. I will not join your mindless, anti-intellectual cult of celebrity.

Hmmm. Maybe a complex is getting triggered here…. I may need some more fashion therapy.

Here’s the email I sent out today announcing my blog:

<br /> td { font-size:12px; color:#000000; line-height:150%; font-family:trebuchet ms; }<br /> a { color:#FF6600; color:#FF6600; color:#FF6600; }<br />

Hastings Hart Starts Blog on Men’s Fashion by Dan D. Lyons BERKELEY, Calif. — Hastings Hart, a writer in Berkeley, California, has started a blog on men’s fashion, titled Confessions of an Ex-Preppy (http://www.confessionsofanexpreppy.com/). It is an unusual move for Hart, 43, who has spent most of his free time in life obsessively reading the news, writing about political psychology, and avoiding popular culture like a politician avoids responsibility. He has not thought about what he has worn since high school, when he learned to dress like the Southern preppy he was. Hart, who for years had been wearing the same style of khakis every single day and whose shirts were nearly all the same, said, “I used to think that anybody concerned with fashion was as dumb as a box of rocks.” But then he fell in love with a woman who is fascinated with fashion and who is smart as heck. “Naturally, I had to conclude that the empirical evidence was strongly indicating that thinking about men’s fashion wasn’t going to lower my I.Q.” “I still want to publish my book on politics, because it would bring about world peace, but if this fashion thing takes off, then that will have to wait,” Hart said. Because of this psychological aspect, Hart’s blog is an unusual take on the fashion world, which by definition is all about extraversion. For example, in one recent post, he wrote about a fashion advertisement, but he wrote hardly anything about the clothes. Most of the post was analysis of a psychological complex of Hart’s that had been triggered by the ad. “If my blog becomes a movie, it will be titled Revenge of the Introverts,” Hart said. Ex-Preppies Start 12-Step Organization by Sue Flay CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A group of former preppies today announced the foundation of Preppies Anonymous, a 12-step organization to help ex-preppies escape their addiction to L.L. Bean. Biff Stanwick, the founder, said that a blog by Hastings Hart, Confessions of an Ex-Preppy (http://www.confessionsofanexpreppy.com/), was the catalyst that led to the group’s formation. “I had been in denial,” said Biff, whose addiction to L.L. Bean cost him several hundred dollars and led his wife and kids to leave him for Dolce and Gabbana. Reading Confessions of an Ex-Preppy helped Biff see specifically how he’d been buying the wrong kinds of clothes and helped him to make amends. “I’ve been wearing collars without buttons for three months now,” Biff said. “I know I’m only one Bean catalog away from being a preppy, but as long as Hastings keeps posting, I’m confident that I can stay this way.”

Yet Another Blog Created by Hugh Jass BERKELEY, Calif. — According to Technorati, there are more than 112 million blogs in existence, with 175,000 being added every day. But after thinking hard for years about all the world’s political problems, Hastings Hart decided that what the world needs now is one more blog, Confessions of an Ex-Preppy (http://www.confessionsofanexpreppy.com/). One of Hart’s friends, reached by phone, told a reporter, “Great, another damn blog to keep up with. Tell Hastings thanks.” A Berkeley liberal named Tom, who asked that his last name not be used because of Hart’s well-known propensity to take revenge on his enemies with blistering sarcasm whose erudition makes it undefeatable, said, “A blog on fashion? We’re trying to save the whales, Free Tibet, and stop the occupation of Berkeley by the Marines. Hastings wants us to give up our tie-dyes?” When asked why he felt he had to foist yet another blog on the world, Hart said, “The empirical evidence strongly indicates that there’s never ever been a blog like mine!”