I’ve talked about Crumb’s limitations in other places about the blog too. Feel free to look them up and raise your blood pressure, if defending Crumb from random old blog posts is your thing.

There can definitely be something revolting in the artifice of fashion…
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Yes; the holding up of unattainable, inhuman perfection; pseudo-rebelliousness; cynical exploitation of sexual/racial areas…

But, “artifice” can harmlessly be imaginative, amusing, bizarre, or simply ridiculous:

Bjork; http://theraspberrystain.thebutterflyfx.com/images/Stylewalksplanett/biork-1.jpg

http://www.dexigner.com/news/20606

The first four photos at http://tokyofashion.com/tag/extreme-fashion/ …

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I was trying to say, though, that there’s something attractive too. I don’t think it’s an accident that there are so many gay men attracted to this world. You can see how it might be a relief after a lifetime of having your authenticity questioned to be in a place where those questions aren’t really raised….
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Unlike those historic Jews who turned to finance and “usury” because they were driven out of other occupations (starting with farming), I don’t think gay guys are driven into fashion: “Oh, good, here’s a place where my ‘authenticity’ won’t be questioned!”

Indeed, it seems t’me that they routinely delight in aesthetically inspired artificiality; it’s not down-to-earth women that win their admiration and imitation, but larger-than-live divas like Garland, Streisand.

From Oscar Wilde:

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“The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.”

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
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BTW, is that gold background behind the “mannequins” in the first shot (looks like a hammered-metal plate) not reminiscent of a halo? Or a Van Gogh Sun?

Can one not make the case that calling every cylindrical object around a “penis substitute” is reminiscent of phallocentrism, “The privileging of the phallus in understanding meaning or social relations”?

Howcum every torus shape doesn’t get similar treatment? “Look at those fat cops, munching on ‘vagina substitutes’!”

Those “cigarette substitutes” being waved around to exploit the now-”forbidden pleasure” aspect of tobacco, reminds of Edward Bernays, P.R. and advertising mastermind, who brought into the field discoveries in psychology, the better to manipulate the masses for political and commercial aims.

In his massively influential 1928 “Propaganda” (poor Bernays was dismayed to hear the Nazis later used its techniques; who would’ve thought?)…

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Bernays places great importance on the ability of a propaganda producer, as he views himself, to unlock the motives behind an individual’s desires, not simply the reason an individual might offer. He argues, “Man’s thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress.”

Bernays suggests that propaganda may become increasingly effective and influential through the discovery of audiences’ hidden motives. He asserts that the emotional response inherently present in propaganda limits the audience’s choices by creating a binary mentality, which can result in quicker, more enthused responses…
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_%28book%29

The “Suffragettes and Cigarettes” section at http://tinyurl.com/aygvp57 shows how Bernays tied in the fight for women’s rights with cigarettes, describing the cancer-sticks as “torches of liberty”…

‘ According to Tolkien, we feel in everyday life a jaded ownership of those things familiar to us. The world becomes mundane: without surprise and beneath our experiential notice. However, as he writes, “Spring is, of course, not really less beautiful because we have seen or heard of other like events”. Events that are to us uninteresting are to others “the first ever seen and recognized”. Spring’s explosive beauty never leaves; but our egos suppress its “fluency”, in Cage’s words. ‘
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‘ But what type of depiction allows spring to be spring again? Tolkien argues that it is fantasy. By this, one should not understand him to mean the use of orcs and elves. Tolkien writes that fantasy at its most basic is the depiction of something “not actually present”—something not enclosed by “the domination of observed fact”. For just this reason, it reminds us that “observed fact” cannot encircle the alien Otherness of our world. ‘
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‘ By depicting the “not actually present”, we subvert the illusion that we have seen it all—that we are the all-knowing possessors of the world around us. We are reminded that “all [we] had (or knew) was dangerous and potent, not really effectively chained, free and wild”. The “arresting strangeness” of fantasy breaches the walls of ironic detachment that we have built around ourselves, which have given us the comfort of experiential death. And it is for this reason that the fantastical and exaggerated have been put away in modern times. As Tolkien says, “Many people dislike being ‘arrested’.” Experiential works have been relegated to children and teenagers; and adults, when they pay attention at all, approach only as disinterested analyzers of subtext. ‘

http://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/post/47827086914/toward-an-experiential-art

That is, women in the eroticized position of male viewer are in the eroticized position of male viewer. Showing women holding phallic symbols could be seen as giving women the phallus; i.e., the one doing the erotic viewing is female, not male.

There’s just a lot of cross-identification and cross-viewing in fashion, I think. Gender and sexuality are just really presented as very fluid in these images….