Second Outside Reading

This week I read an article from a book entitled "Chuck Klosterman IV". Chuck Klosterman is a journalist living in New York City, and his articles are very funny. The section I read this week was called "Three Stories Involving Pants" and was a collection of three separate articles. If this title isn't intreguing enough, the author has also included a hypothetical question before the articles even start. This question is:

You work in an office, performing a job you find satisfying (and which compensates you adequately). The company that employs you is suddenly purchased by an eccentric millionaire who plans to immediately raise each person's salary by 5% and extend an extra week of vacation to all full-time employees. However, this new owner intends to enforce a somewhat radical dress code: every day, men will have to wear tuxedos, tails, and top hats (during the summer months, male employees will be allowed to wear gray three-piece suits on "casual Fridays"). Women must exclusively work in formal wear, preferably ball gowns or prom dresses. Each employee will be given an annual $500 stipend to purchase necessary garments, but that money can only be spent on work-related clothing. The new regime starts in three months. Do you seek employment elsewhere?

And my answer is, of course not! I find the job satisfying, and in three months I'll be receiving 5% more pay. The fact that we'd have to wear ball gowns or prom dresses is a definite plus; who doesn't want to wear fancy dresses to work every day? I find this question rediculous because, if given the option, I would choose to dress up each day for work (or even school in my case). This hypothetical question somewhat dissapoints me because the "formal wear" theory is meant to be considered a reason to quit your job.

I realise that this question isn't actually part of the articles I claimed to have read for this week, so I will comment on an article that was. The one I enjoyed the most was titled "Mannequin Appropriation Project". In it, Chuck Klosterman describes how he went to a local Gap and bought the exact outfit desplayed on a mannequin in the storefront window. The outfit consisted of a blue sweater, a collared dress shirt worn untucked under the sweater, and jeans. As he walkes into work, he is greeted in many ways: "This is a stunning development!" "Are you in love?" Klosterman counters these arguments by saying he has now "become a mannequin," or, "I've turned into a new person by turning into a nonperson," as he puts it. The article ends with the author spilling gravy on his new sweater at lunch because, unlike the mannequin, he is a human being.

Perhaps this article is meant to be some deep insight on materialism, but it's not. In fact, after reading other pieces by this author, I don't think that was his intention either. It does prove an interesting point though. Nobody really dresses like the models in catalogues and in storefront windows. In reality, if anyone did dress like them, we'd look rediculous (no offence Chuck Klosterman). Models are supposed to look like someone spent hours deciding what they should wear. Human beings are not. That is why I thought this article proved a point everyone already knew: humans can't be mannequins and mannequins can't be humans.

As pointless as this article was, I still found it incredibly entertaining and would definately reccomend this book to anyone with a sense of humor.