Complex Numbers

Shaka, Brah

There are many things in this universe that I don't understand -- there are, in fact, a lot more of them than there are things that I do understand -- but way up near the top of the list of things I don't understand is "fashion."

Hawaiian shirts are now “problematic” symbols of colonialism  

But one thing I do know: Nothing says "I don't understand fashion" more than a Hawaiian shirt. Which is why they're a central feature of my wardrobe.

This article has been waiting in my queue since April, so some things in it may seem outdated -- unlike Hawaiian shirts, which never go out of style.

To make matters worse, this is kind of a rabbit hole of links. I'm linking to a blog I follow. He links to the original Guardian article and a couple of other sources. If you've been here long enough, you'll know that I'm certainly not above linking directly to the Guardian. But in this case, I find Coyne's commentary more interesting.

Oy! I wake up this morning to find, thanks to the Guardian, that my beloved Hawaiian shirts—technically, “aloha shirts“—have gotten the stink-eye from the Perpetually Offended. According to the paper—or rather, according to a Princeton academic, clearly empowered to be an arbiter of culture, these colorful shirts, worn by locals (Asians, Native Hawaiians) and immigrant mainlanders alike, are now “problematic.”

Translation: someone didn't like seeing them, so they dug around for reasons to try to cancel them. Dig deep enough, and you can find a reason to be offended by any given article of clothing. Hawaiian shirts just make great targets -- mostly because you can't miss them.

To get the full argument, you'll have to go to the link. He quotes from a few different sources, and I don't want to confuse anyone by pulling excerpts from excerpts. It's more Coyne's own conclusions that are important here.

But it gets worse, for the white-supremacist “Boogaloo Boys“, who advocate revolution, have adopted the aloha shirt as an unofficial uniform.

To me, that's just another reason to wear one: to reclaim the shirts from those assholes.

Frankly I don’t give a rat’s patootie about what Anishanslin or any other Pecksniff thinks. I don’t wear my aloha shirts with camo pants, body armor, or weapons, so I’m not worried about accusations of being a proud boy.

I mean, as they are the height of fashion, it's no surprise that different groups will gravitate toward them. Should we also cancel ties because hedge fund managers wear them? No, we should avoid them because they've outlived their usefulness. Unlike Hawaiian shirts.

This fracas about aloha shirts is a prime example of performative wokeness: pretending you’re engaging in helping the downtrodden while actually doing noting to help them—what you’re doing is singling yourself out as particularly moral and perspicacious.

Coyne's love of big words exceeds only my own.

You know, it used to be that people would rag on cheap shirts from Squall-Mart or similar places. "Those are made by near-slaves making a dollar a day! We should boycott them!" Well, it's good to be concerned about the plight of the workers of the world. It's even better to actually do something about it. Boycotting the shirts isn't doing something about it. In fact, I'd argue that if everyone stopped buying those shirts, those workers would cease being workers, and instead of making a dollar a day they'd make no dollars a day. That's unrelated, though; my Hawaiian shirts, the ones I bought for myself anyway, are actual USA-made shirts stitched up in actual Hawaii.

The point being that you can have opinions all day, which is fine, but are you actually helping?

I was once at a local bagel place, and I happened to overhear a conversation about food as cultural appropriation. I'm fine with hearing arguments about it, though I'd argue that it's really not except in very narrow circumstances -- but in this case, the person doing the arguing was eating a bacon, egg and cheese bagel.

Why that's hypocritical, I hope I don't have to explain.

In conclusion, you can pry my Hawaiian shirts from my cold, dead hands. And then hopefully give them to someone else who appreciates these pinnacles of sartorial elegance.

Alamo had a special screening of this fantasy adventure quest movie from 1982; I hadn't seen it in a long time, so I went.

One-Sentence Movie Review: The Dark Crystal

No CGI, no frenetic pacing, no jump cuts, no catering to people with short attention spans; this slow-paced movie focused on plot and character design, so it's probably not going to appeal to modern audiences, but taken in the context of the time it was produced, it's a showcase of creativity.

Rating: 3.5/5