I’ll admit I’m no fashion plate. In fact, as I look back on my fashion choices, I’m a bit of a slob. My ordinary outfit for four decades of teaching college students consisted of running shoes, jeans, a T-shirt, and a sport coat. One of those sport coats I bought for $19 was my favorite, but like all comfortable T-shirts, it became so worn that its lining started to hang outside the jacket after a couple of decades—shoot, I begin to digress.
It’s not that I didn’t own a suit, tie, and dress shoes. I just kept them in reserve for occasional meetings with people in suits and for dining out in some table cloth restaurant with my wife, who dressed considerably more fashionably than I. No judgment here on those suited people in meetings and my lovely wife. In fact, I cherish the memories of our table cloth restaurant dates. But at heart, I’m a running shoes, jeans, T-shirt, and sport coat guy on most “formal occasions,” and a work boots, jeans, and sweatshirt (depending on the temps) guy during field and research efforts.
Enough about Me
Here’s the New York Post’s headline: “TikTok user secretly films scantily clad women during nights out in UK: ‘So creepy’.” * The story by Katherine Donlevy this morning caught my eye. It's about “dressed up” women out for a night on the town. Some “creep” took pictures of them and posted those pictures. It was an inevitable consequence of being in public in this century. Every smart phone is a camera, a really good camera, and other cameras make the spy cameras of the last century seem like primitive daguerreotypes or ambrotypes, or that small “Brownie” black-and-white camera my parents had when I was a kid.
The story thread here is the “dressing up” part, not the “creep taking pictures” part.
I suppose young women, young men, middle aged women, middle aged men, and senior citizens don their finest when they are out in public: They all know that they will be seen by others, so they put on whatever they believe best complements the image they want to project. It’s like me in a suit at those occasional meetings with others in suits. In such a meeting the suited people are less inclined to pay attention to the slob down at the end of the conference table. I dressed; I spoke; some listened because I fit into the setting not so much because I had anything profound to say.
Anyway, those dressed up women that the creep photographed and videoed did not go out to be invisible. They dressed to fit in and to attract some reasonable attention. Otherwise, they could have gone out in a frayed rob, oversized sweatshirt, and old fluffy slippers the dog occasionally hid. Of course, that fashion would also attract attention, just not the kind of attention they sought. By the way, there’s nothing really wrong in “looking one’s best.”
But the intrusiveness of the twenty-first century camera holder is inescapable. So is the intrusiveness of the social media on which “creeps” post images of people they don’t know or people they voyeuristically know. If phone cameras have done nothing else, they have made voyeurism a worldwide hobby and given the pap. We’re not talking photos of sunsets, here, but photos of scantily clad females out for a night on the town with friends.
That begs a question. If one knows that there are, in fact, creeps out there, voyeurs out there, should one complain about reaching through social media an audience wider than the occasional gawking passerby on the sidewalk? Our private lives aren’t very private when we mingle with the masses.
It’s not that the photographed and videoed women were purposefully ostentatious. They looked in the mirror and said, “Barring just going au naturel into the public domain, I think I’ll go with a modicum of modesty in an outfit that will still attract attention. The burqa just doesn’t attract the attention I seek.” And “Look, Self, let’s be honest with each other, I do want some attention, just not the attention of voyeurs and creeps.”
Your Next Public Appearance: Smile; You’re on Candid Camera
There’s an inescapable vanity in most of us. Comb or brush your hair? Why? Watch your figure? Why? Buy the latest yoga pants from Lulu Lemon? Jeans more expensive than those sold in Walmart? Trim a beard? The list of habits that bespeak vanity seems endless.
Vanity: It runs through veins. Walk past a line of young people waiting to get into a club in Las Vegas. They’re dressed to kill, so to speak and looking their finest. Nobody shows up in that old comfortable sweatshirt and fluffy slippers, especially during a singles night out that might attracted “wanted attention” as opposed to “unwanted attention.”
Veins coursing with vanity, a pervasive fluid that runs like emulsified fat. Anyone who ever dressed for an occasion of any sort has some of it coursing through veins, even yours truly standing all those years at the front of a lecture hall or lab, dressed as I was in running shoes, jeans, T-shirt, and $19 sport coat.
*https://nypost.com/2023/12/14/news/creepy-tiktok-user-secretly-filming-women-during-nights-out-in-uk/
It’s not that I didn’t own a suit, tie, and dress shoes. I just kept them in reserve for occasional meetings with people in suits and for dining out in some table cloth restaurant with my wife, who dressed considerably more fashionably than I. No judgment here on those suited people in meetings and my lovely wife. In fact, I cherish the memories of our table cloth restaurant dates. But at heart, I’m a running shoes, jeans, T-shirt, and sport coat guy on most “formal occasions,” and a work boots, jeans, and sweatshirt (depending on the temps) guy during field and research efforts.
Enough about Me
Here’s the New York Post’s headline: “TikTok user secretly films scantily clad women during nights out in UK: ‘So creepy’.” * The story by Katherine Donlevy this morning caught my eye. It's about “dressed up” women out for a night on the town. Some “creep” took pictures of them and posted those pictures. It was an inevitable consequence of being in public in this century. Every smart phone is a camera, a really good camera, and other cameras make the spy cameras of the last century seem like primitive daguerreotypes or ambrotypes, or that small “Brownie” black-and-white camera my parents had when I was a kid.
The story thread here is the “dressing up” part, not the “creep taking pictures” part.
I suppose young women, young men, middle aged women, middle aged men, and senior citizens don their finest when they are out in public: They all know that they will be seen by others, so they put on whatever they believe best complements the image they want to project. It’s like me in a suit at those occasional meetings with others in suits. In such a meeting the suited people are less inclined to pay attention to the slob down at the end of the conference table. I dressed; I spoke; some listened because I fit into the setting not so much because I had anything profound to say.
Anyway, those dressed up women that the creep photographed and videoed did not go out to be invisible. They dressed to fit in and to attract some reasonable attention. Otherwise, they could have gone out in a frayed rob, oversized sweatshirt, and old fluffy slippers the dog occasionally hid. Of course, that fashion would also attract attention, just not the kind of attention they sought. By the way, there’s nothing really wrong in “looking one’s best.”
But the intrusiveness of the twenty-first century camera holder is inescapable. So is the intrusiveness of the social media on which “creeps” post images of people they don’t know or people they voyeuristically know. If phone cameras have done nothing else, they have made voyeurism a worldwide hobby and given the pap. We’re not talking photos of sunsets, here, but photos of scantily clad females out for a night on the town with friends.
That begs a question. If one knows that there are, in fact, creeps out there, voyeurs out there, should one complain about reaching through social media an audience wider than the occasional gawking passerby on the sidewalk? Our private lives aren’t very private when we mingle with the masses.
It’s not that the photographed and videoed women were purposefully ostentatious. They looked in the mirror and said, “Barring just going au naturel into the public domain, I think I’ll go with a modicum of modesty in an outfit that will still attract attention. The burqa just doesn’t attract the attention I seek.” And “Look, Self, let’s be honest with each other, I do want some attention, just not the attention of voyeurs and creeps.”
Your Next Public Appearance: Smile; You’re on Candid Camera
There’s an inescapable vanity in most of us. Comb or brush your hair? Why? Watch your figure? Why? Buy the latest yoga pants from Lulu Lemon? Jeans more expensive than those sold in Walmart? Trim a beard? The list of habits that bespeak vanity seems endless.
Vanity: It runs through veins. Walk past a line of young people waiting to get into a club in Las Vegas. They’re dressed to kill, so to speak and looking their finest. Nobody shows up in that old comfortable sweatshirt and fluffy slippers, especially during a singles night out that might attracted “wanted attention” as opposed to “unwanted attention.”
Veins coursing with vanity, a pervasive fluid that runs like emulsified fat. Anyone who ever dressed for an occasion of any sort has some of it coursing through veins, even yours truly standing all those years at the front of a lecture hall or lab, dressed as I was in running shoes, jeans, T-shirt, and $19 sport coat.
*https://nypost.com/2023/12/14/news/creepy-tiktok-user-secretly-filming-women-during-nights-out-in-uk/
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