Reading Pamela's post on the Silicon Valley Mom's blog about skinny, noxious fashion types (from Menlo Park and Atherton!), clutching their designer bags as they bitchily Blahnik their way through the mall, gave me pause.
It's true that the silicon valley has changed. Years ago, in the silicon valley's naive, young years, it was just a vast post-academic, post cold-war arena, populated by thousands of geeks.
You could see them walking down Palo Alto's University Avenue at all hours of day and night, thousands of geek-feet encased in Birkenstocks and white socks, the sound of bearded, whuffly geek laughter drifting in the air as they chatted about Usenet groups, technology, startups, and various hacks. All over the valley, you could see them congregating in the traditional "geek clumping packs" as they ogled new technology at Fry's, listened to presentations at SLAC, or frantically gathered "gimme" products at the weekly trade show extravaganzas.
There was geek music, geek entertainment, geek culture, and geek love. It was awesome. Everyone looked pretty bad, it's true, but having lived here in the eighties, I can attest to the fact that it's just because nobody cared, and not because they did the wierd eighties fashion stuff.
But now, as Pamela points out, there's a new force in the valley and her name is ... if I get this right.... raving fashion-conscious, social-climbing, nasty-to-the-"help" bitch.
Oh dear.
What could have caused our beautiful valley to slide into typical upper-middle class suburban nastiness? What could have caused our beloved Stanford Shopping Center to turn into a miniature Westwood Village?
Let's look into the causes.
If fed enough wine, some people here in the valley have been known to speculate that it's a revenge of the marketing bunny kind of thing. The ubiquitous marketing bunny was first brought in, if I remember correctly, by Apple computer, as sort of an eye-candy accoutrement to the technical company that had everything. Marketing bunnies were liberal arts-educated, often blonde, meticulously styled, and were the first significant aesthetic social force in the valley. Marketing bunnies were not known for a particularly rich inner life, however, and most were very bored by high tech.
Well, it's twenty years later, and many of these ex-bunnies have married our geeks and settled down. What happens to an aging marketing bunny? The hair stays blonde (sometimes as many as 15 different shades!), the features harden, the lines begin to be strategically botoxed, the lips plumped. And the goals? The interests? The activities?
Yup. Self. And how self looks. And how self exercises. Fashion, of course. And then ... the bitterness of aging. (caution: that's an extreme example)
But you can find bitchy Prada-wearing post-bunnies in every single suburban bastion of wealth. And I'm not sure that I buy this theory. That our geeks got ... dare we say ... eaten? by some sort of blonde female vacuosity-generator turned nasty? It just seems too easy to blame the bunny. Maybe societal forces turned her into a raving bitch. Maybe it's not her fault.
A second theory is that there's just too damn much money around here, and that Americans who make a lot of money have no idea who to model themselves after, so they choose old Dynasty characters instead of doing something neat that they are passionate about. This is a highly amusing theory and makes for good party conversation. I like this one.
And another, connected, theory goes back to the phrase "rich inner life." You see, one of the best things about geeks and the silicon valley is the un self-consciousness. I'm not talking about every-day life. I'm talking about enthusiasms,about passions. Hobbies, joys, fun things with (let's face it) a high dork factor. Kind of the opposite of fashion, if you think about it.
In other parts of the country, young professionals engage in formalized rituals: parties, bars, and dating. These rituals are based upon self-consciousness, and have been designed for years to perpetuate society. You know: cute girl is raised to have "nice values," is educated, meets cute guy, gets married, and ... um, joins junior league?
Nothing intrinsically wrong with that system, but what if you start introducing large sums of money into it. Whammo! Raving bitch with Prada. I'd bet you anything. Oh. And I forgot part of the description: If cute girl doesn't wear the right cute clothes, or if her parents aren't rich enough, other cute girls cut her to bits and shun her. Nice, huh?
Now you could either ban fashion (which, in my personal book, might be a good idea), or you can raise your child with passions and enthusiasms to resist the most powerful social nastiness.
I've always found it odd that boy-hobbies seem to lead towards action, but so many girl-hobbies lead towards looks. Maybe it's time to really work on helping women develop outward-based passions and joys. Stuff that's NOT about themselves and how they look, but is about almost anything else (even the dreaded horse lust). Girls with real passions have a natural defense against bunnyhood.
So how can our silicon valley defend itself against the bunny-carried virus of upper middle-class social viciousness? Perhaps an unnatural interest in fashion can be treated as a slight brain anomaly. Or perhaps children who display fashion thrall should immediately be taken in hand and their brains engaged. What is fashionable and "pretty?" Why? What is the difference between being fashionable now in our culture, and in other cultures, at other times? Are pretty people better? Do they have more power? Discuss. How has fashion had an effect on politics? Has it helped to topple societies? How is fashion like architecture? Do girls use fashion against one another? How? Do you want to be like that? And so forth.
Perhaps fashion is OK, as long as it's kept firmly in context.
And perhaps geek culture could realize that we have a unique opportunity here in the silicon valley. We have made our financial successes freed from the crippling and often bizarre social restrictions put upon workers in other career arenas like investment banking, anything that deals with the public, or oil. Now many of us are settled in our large McMansions or small, exquisitely-priced Palo Alto and Menlo Park homes, and our lives shape the silicon valley of the future.
Where do we take our children, our culture? We have such great power, intellect, and interest of life here in the valley. Surely success doesn't just stop at Prada and bitchiness?
This first appeared on the Silicon Valley Mom's blog
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