So, as a strereotypical man, I don’t much care what you’re wearing really, but I do appreciate the aesthetics of looking good.  It is pleasing and, you could even argue, ethical, to make sure beauty exists in the world, and that includes the beauty of what we wear.

Beauty matters.  I think that’s fair to say.  And so does dignity, and so it matters that we wear clothes that manifest beauty and dignity, just as it’s important that our actions reflect this as well.  But, as always, I think there’s a middle ground.  It’s good to care about looking good, but I would say it’s wrong to want to look “better”–that ceases being about beauty and dignity and starts being about status.

And let’s be honest: a lot of clothes look basically the same, and when they do look the same, it becomes a status thing, a competition, an assertion that because I wear this or do this, I am better than you, who does not–or cannot–wear this.   So is fashion important and meaningful?  Sure, of course.  So is sculpture.  But just as a lot of people own sculpture to show how “refined” they are rather than as a means of any inherent attraction to the art, so people mostly use fashion as a means of one-upmanship.

So is she actually wearing that?  Sure, why not? Get over yourself.  Anyways, I wrote about this before for killingthebuddha and here’s an interesting NYT article:

It is almost endearing to hear fashion gurus talk about empowering women (as Mr. Manuel did), building their confidence (as Ms. Webb did) or dressing them from the inside out (as Mr. Kressley did) when what they may really be doing is reinforcing a stereotype that people who do not embrace fashion are somehow emotionally deficient, while promoting their own interests as paid endorsers of watches, credit cards, jewelry lines and Web sites.

The gurus counter that dressing fashionably can change an outlook, making a person feel better, or at least less frustrated if not exactly fabulous.

“We don’t make them over,” Ms. Webb said. “We show them how to make themselves into what they want to be.”

But some gurus acknowledge that there is a darker side to the profession. Gretta Monahan, an owner of several spas and a fashion boutique in Boston who appears regularly on the Rachael Ray show to talk about fashion, considered giving up television in 2005, when a show she was the host of on TLC ended.

“The deal was, unless I was willing to basically take a civilian, a nice woman, and take her down in a style that was cutting and demanding, then I couldn’t go on,” Ms. Monahan said. “I just refused.”

Mr. Verdi, too, knowingly plays into a stereotype, using a piece of what people expect gay men to be to further his career.

“It has both helped me and hurt me,” he said, sounding in need of a makeover himself. “We are seen as queer mistrals, as if we are neutered in some intellectual way. I wanted to evolve into doing general entertainment coverage, but that part of my career has been challenging at best. I don’t want to live in the ghetto of being a gay style person.”