Comments irony has made

  • ummm, excuse me, but

    consumerism and dressing nice are very simply part of the problem.  people focus on such external, superficial arenas of interpersonal communication instead of focusing on the larger issue. if, as an environmental activists, we give in to the idea that how you look is as important as your message, then quite basically the other side has won: they have proven that you need to buy into a particular society's temporal whims (in this case, suits or whatnot) that have no relevance to the greater good; that is, they are obfuscatory.  i'm not advocating showing up in rags, smelling like shit, and raving at people to love the earth. i'm more saying that we can indeed be unique and yet be communicative, warm, and passionate about ideas.  if somebody sees you wearing a nice suit, s/he will think about the suit instead of your minute arguments on land use: s/he will then think, oh, this is nice, but hey, where can i purchase a suit?  where can i own a suit?  and owning, a holistic approach to the environment and the planet, is what we are aiming at, right? (did anyone read the "death of environmentalism" essay?) On Yes, clothes really do make the activist posted 4 years, 9 months ago 24 Responses

  • i, like, totally agree, you know!

    I think lou has come with the perfect solution to all of our country's -- nay, our earth's! -- environmental problems: dress nicer!

    Obviously, we environmentalists have been wrong by focusing on larger issues of human consumption and treatment of the planet, as well as gendered issues of heteronormative capitalist society like ownership and husbanding.  No, what we need is to focus on axe commercials and clothing.

    I think we need to start eating junk food, getting obese, and whitening ourselves to look like the republican party, all so we have more, as lou so brilliantly espouses, credibility.  Because when we give up our ethics and pay our hard earned money for an arbitrary trend that relies on scaring the population through fashion, brought to you (copyrighted) by the world's poor, through sweatshop labor, then we will truly have made it!

    Yes, i'll tell the little 13 year old cambodians to speed up their little hands; tell the fat slave owners in south america to spray more pesticides and fuel to create more and more clothing, because as we all know, clothes do make the man.  No, thats not a tradition brought to us from centuries of sovereign rule (military clothing gave way to suits, etc) and based on a class-based hierarchy but actually a purely representative aspect of culture.

    Thanks Lou, because of you, I now know i can pass all the clean air bills I want, because i'll give in to the us' consumer-industrial complex (which never, ever, ever takes attention away from the real issues like -- gasp -- environmentalism, or even poverty) because i'll be wearing a brand new shirt, that i am positive a) won't be out of style when the powers-that-be want it to be and b) i won't get sick of when i look in the closet.

    Huzzah, the world's problems are solved!On Yes, clothes really do make the activist posted 4 years, 9 months ago 24 Responses