Hunting of the Snark
I can’t stand the Internet practice of mocking celebrity style, even as I’m obviously attracted to it enough to be familiar with it.
My problem is not that these blogs treat celebrity culture with irreverence. Debunking celebrity is great. Fame hurts art and 
people, and the more we debunk it the happier we will be.
My objection is that this kind of writing encourages a numbing aesthetic conservatism, though not on the part of its subjects. I doubt they care, unless they see the coverage as positive. Mockery has never been very good at keeping people in line.
It’s excellent, however, at policing the tastes of its writers and followers. Mockery creates a sense of easily punctured superiority. Lines must be drawn to keep you on the right side of the dreaded fence. You have to use stricter and stricter language to keep down the idea that these people might conceivably look good; you have to explain that she looks like a household object, that he has no idea what to wear, that she doesn’t know how to flatter her coloring and body, or, if you’re going to admit you like the look, the classic “she’s crazy but I love it.”
And anyway, how are you going to draw a line between the “attention whores” and the arty kids, between Katy Perry and Bjork? Both of them want to be seen; part of art is being seen, even if in the mirror. Both of them want to express themselves, even if their chosen form is the tabloid. The arty kids are smarter; they tend to look a lot better and have higher levels of style, but if you’re going to make fun of one, you always end up making fun of the other, because they’re different varieties of the same human impulse. And then you start to dismiss both, or tag the arty kids with the approving “crazy,” which is a similar dismissal: I’m not like that, but I like that. And then your whole sense of beauty changes just a little bit. Maybe it changes for the worse.
I also take issue with snark on unflattering clothes. It’s much more reasonable to complain that an outfit hides a person’s beauty, but this presupposes that the only possible point is the person looking beautiful.
I’ve always liked Wilde’s inevitable epigram that “one must either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.” One of its interpretations is that it’s possible to differentiate between your clothes and yourself. Beauty can be achieved either looking beautiful or simply by wearing something beautiful (or something ugly but inspiring). The latter will give you aesthetic pleasure whether it flatters your face or not; there’s no reason why this way should improve a room any less.
Flattery isn’t a bad ideal. I’m just saying there could be others, and they might contradict it without invalidating either. There’s so little beauty in the world sometimes; I think we should give a fighting chance to any possibility of it.
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