fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-08-11 12:11 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-08-11 12:11 pm
(no subject)
Dear the New York Times Thursday Styles section, you are SO RIDICULOUS. I don't expect the Styles sections to be about anything non-frivolous, of course, and I actually adore Sunday Styles because it's so gleefully self-aware of its frivolity and not even slightly ashamed of it--I don't know what I would do without the Social Q's column in my life. But I don't think they need multiple Styles sections to cover the "fashion, faux trends, and guerrilla class warfare" beat. Some of the fashion articles can go in the Arts section throughout the week, the prettiest of the ones that are just pretty pictures without thought can go in Sunday Styles, and the rest can vanish from the earth. And the Thursday section, aside from being significantly less fun due to the lack of weddings, apparently has extremely poor editorial control and/or even lazier writers, which I would not have thought possible.
To wit: there's a tiny little "article" in today's Thursday Styles about the practice of holding one's hands together in the air to make a heart shape. (For those unacquainted with the NYT--yes, really.) Accompanied by photos of celebrities doing this, of course, and the text talks about Taylor Swift a lot; the whole thing takes up a third of a page, filling space beneath an interview with a fashion designer. This is typical Styles stuff, and when it's in its proper place (on Sunday), I enjoy it. HOWEVER. This article starts by announcing that "recently a demure, loving [hand gesture] has risen to popularity." Then it describes the hand heart and lists a bunch of celebrities who have been seen making it, and then some other pop culture appearances...one of which is the Mountain Goats' "I Corinthians 13: 8-10". From fifteen years ago. New York Times Styles section, you are always on the bleeding edge of hip new trends.
(Of course the other thing wrong with the Styles sections is that they either write about incredibly unimportant shit as if it were important, or they write about important shit that's been relegated to Styles because it's about women, and then treated as if it were unimportant. Like the should-have-been-fascinating-and-3x-as-long article today about three recent memoirs by daughters of famous asshole writers--well, two of them were assholes, the third I can't tell and also he was a philosopher, not a novelist, and generally seemed out of place for the sake of bringing it up to three. I didn't even mind that the article's author coined the term "daughterati" (which shows up earlier on the page in the print version, in a pull quote) because I thought it meant she was going to actually write about the fact that the memoirs were all written by daughters specifically, not just children, and about fathers, not just parents. Of course she did nothing of the sort, and didn't really write about anything at all, just summarized bits of each of them one after the other without any comparisons or analysis or even commentary.)
Entirely unrelated addendum: I'm currently in retreat from both my LJ/DW reading lists and just about everything else on the internet that involves human interaction. This probably won't last much longer but if it does, rest assured that I'm ignoring everybody, not just you, for failtastic reasons of my own.
To wit: there's a tiny little "article" in today's Thursday Styles about the practice of holding one's hands together in the air to make a heart shape. (For those unacquainted with the NYT--yes, really.) Accompanied by photos of celebrities doing this, of course, and the text talks about Taylor Swift a lot; the whole thing takes up a third of a page, filling space beneath an interview with a fashion designer. This is typical Styles stuff, and when it's in its proper place (on Sunday), I enjoy it. HOWEVER. This article starts by announcing that "recently a demure, loving [hand gesture] has risen to popularity." Then it describes the hand heart and lists a bunch of celebrities who have been seen making it, and then some other pop culture appearances...one of which is the Mountain Goats' "I Corinthians 13: 8-10". From fifteen years ago. New York Times Styles section, you are always on the bleeding edge of hip new trends.
(Of course the other thing wrong with the Styles sections is that they either write about incredibly unimportant shit as if it were important, or they write about important shit that's been relegated to Styles because it's about women, and then treated as if it were unimportant. Like the should-have-been-fascinating-and-3x-as-long article today about three recent memoirs by daughters of famous asshole writers--well, two of them were assholes, the third I can't tell and also he was a philosopher, not a novelist, and generally seemed out of place for the sake of bringing it up to three. I didn't even mind that the article's author coined the term "daughterati" (which shows up earlier on the page in the print version, in a pull quote) because I thought it meant she was going to actually write about the fact that the memoirs were all written by daughters specifically, not just children, and about fathers, not just parents. Of course she did nothing of the sort, and didn't really write about anything at all, just summarized bits of each of them one after the other without any comparisons or analysis or even commentary.)
Entirely unrelated addendum: I'm currently in retreat from both my LJ/DW reading lists and just about everything else on the internet that involves human interaction. This probably won't last much longer but if it does, rest assured that I'm ignoring everybody, not just you, for failtastic reasons of my own.