"Gay by Design, or a Lifestyle Choice?"
This article is currently number two on the NY Times' most e-mailed list, surpassed only by the death of Kurt Vonnegut. From the headline, one would think it was about the well-worn and ridiculous argument about whether gay people are choosing to be gay, which is almost certainly intentional (so obviously so that I'm a little ashamed that it didn't occur to me immediately that that was not what the article was about). It's actually about how some cars are seen as an indication that the driver is gay. What the fuck?
They're cars. The idea that someone's sexual orientation could be assumed by their choice of transportation really baffles me - but I noticed something else: all three of the people who were quoted talking about how they had been defined, by themselves or someone else, by what car they drove, were from Los Angeles. To me this seems the salient point of the article: people in LA tend to be nuts about cars, a stereotype I've certainly heard about before. It seems weird, though, for the article to portray this as a nationwide trend, if the only people representative of this trend they can find are in LA. The end of the article even contains data saying this is no trend at all. So we're back at the only content being that some people in LA are nuts about cars, and maybe the whole thing was just printed because the deadline was nearing and the space needed to be filled, despite that the article undermines its own relevance. But then... why the hell is it so popular??? I guess since it's in the fashion section, I shouldn't harbor any hope of comprehending (man, that's condescending. It seems so deserved, though. And I really would like to understand why people appreciate this uselessness).
They're cars. The idea that someone's sexual orientation could be assumed by their choice of transportation really baffles me - but I noticed something else: all three of the people who were quoted talking about how they had been defined, by themselves or someone else, by what car they drove, were from Los Angeles. To me this seems the salient point of the article: people in LA tend to be nuts about cars, a stereotype I've certainly heard about before. It seems weird, though, for the article to portray this as a nationwide trend, if the only people representative of this trend they can find are in LA. The end of the article even contains data saying this is no trend at all. So we're back at the only content being that some people in LA are nuts about cars, and maybe the whole thing was just printed because the deadline was nearing and the space needed to be filled, despite that the article undermines its own relevance. But then... why the hell is it so popular??? I guess since it's in the fashion section, I shouldn't harbor any hope of comprehending (man, that's condescending. It seems so deserved, though. And I really would like to understand why people appreciate this uselessness).