“The problem is that self-styling, here, is self-definition through the expression of taste, aesthetics, and cultural consumption instead of through work, values, and—most importantly from my perspective—interpersonal relationships.”
“Class maintenance was more creative than material or physical. So I have always been around popular boys who weren’t jocks. Like pretty much every other straight girl in my orbit, I’ve often pined for them and occasionally dated them. When I Instagrammed a screen shot of the Nike frees conversation, two women commented in quick succession: “I really disagree dude frees are hot” and “Frees are a green light for me.” Our gaze toward these boys is lusty. They’ve had traditional sexual and emotional power over me and over my friends, and yet, I’ve often seen them map their social alienation onto the facts of not being muscular, not liking sports, not wanting to work in finance, having sometimes been mistaken as gay. I’m not saying that gender norms can’t be anxiety-inducing for straight white boys or men. The thing is, speaking on a general level, I’ve never seen these guys be anything other than affirmed, centered, and rewarded—sexually and otherwise—for embodying their brand of masculinity.”
““It’s erotic capital that uses cultural capital to hoist itself up.””
“It’s a commodification of the avant-garde wherein people’s understanding of themselves as countercultural is rooted not in their beliefs or in how they treat people, but in what they choose to consume. These guys use art as a kind of reflective armor that protects them from having to engage intellectually or intimately in ways that make themselves vulnerable, and also from having to look critically at their own behaviors.”
“But a well-educated straight white guy expressing his interest in Fluxus or Dada or Happenings to assert his difference from and superiority to well-educated straight white guys who like football strips those revolutionary art movements of their politics and, as in all instances of appropriation, renders them tools for the visibility and profit—sexual and social if not financial—of the people who already have our attention. So it’s probably not surprising that these artists often make work that is neither freaky nor prophetic nor beautiful, but derivate, bland, or even non-existent.”