Monday September 20, 2004

On Academic Fashion

The Common Review offers up a pitiless screed on the fashions of the fat and tenured. A taste:

Look at us. Glance around a room at a professional meeting: we look like refugees. And not refugees from an interesting culture. Refugees from Scarsdale in 1983 or from Boise in 1994. Many academics, who possess the bewildering self-satisfaction of the entirely self-absorbed, will not accept the idea that garments they purchased new in 1994 are now not only unfashionable but unsavory. In part, our collective reluctance to update our wardrobe proceeds from faulty thinking. Whether applied to clothing or to original research and writing, the academic often thinks, “Hey, if it was good enough to get me tenure, there is no reason to mess with the ideal. I found what fits me. Don’t bother me about revising my signature style.” This leads to distinguished colleagues looking so remorselessly unattractive as to make one long for the days when scholars wore robes.

(via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Posted by jim at 10:44 AM ||