OK, this is from Fox News entertainment section where they are critiquing the clothes worn to the American Music Awards. I would never in a million years waste five minutes watching that show, but I happened to browse over to Fox News and saw this, and since I had done a Fashion! post earlier, I thought I’d take a look. Fox apparently separates fashion into three categories “Good”, “Bad” and “Ugly.” It is unclear to me, and unclear from their website what the difference between “Bad” and “Ugly” might be, but that’s not the point.

Here’s a photo: We’ll call this image “Mary” (’cuz that’s her name).

Here’s another photo: We’ll call this image “Shakira”

Now, I will leave it up to the readers to decide which of these is “good” and which is “bad.”

My point is that I consider modern fashion to be similar to abstract expressionism in that it’s only real cultural value is to provide a means to separate the “cultural elite” from the rest of us redneck rubes. There’s no real intrinsic quality to the vast majority of these outfits, the decisions of what is “good” or “bad” is totally arbitrary and is used, imho, mostly for the critics to snark on people they don’t like. In other words, it’s just a bunch of high school arrogant, petulant snobs grown up into adult arrogant, petulant snobs. Pretty much any of the outfits on display could have been called good, bad or ugly with no rhyme or reason other than the critic wanted to make some snarky point or another.

I see this stuff and it really does remind me of nothing more than a bunch of sorority chicks and fraternity snobs nattering nonsense just to make themselves feel cool. Of course I don’t have much sympathy for the targets either. In general if I ever had a serious issue or problem that had to be dealt with, the whole bunch of them would be totally useless. A dozen average Wal-mart shoppers would be far more use on a deserted island than pretty much the entire population of Hollywood.