Did you know that a few dudes in Brooklyn have put on extra weight? Fascinating, right? Well, New York Times writer Guy Trebay thinks so, and he’s turned those spare tires into a trend piece.
And look, I know as well as anyone that publications demand to be filled, and that there’s not always something exciting to write about. Â To give him the benefit of the doubt, I’m going to assume that Trebay was on deadline, needed something to say, and decided to playfully assert that the “Ralph Kramden potbelly” is the hot new accessory.
But even if the story if a goof, it still frustrates me for two reasons:
(1) It makes incoherent arguments.
The middle of the feature explores why men feel they need to look good, and the chief argument is that they think chicks dig six packs. A few paragraphs earlier, however, Trebay states that “leading with a belly is a male privilege of long standing.”
So… does that mean men with firm abs are an aberration? If that’s true, then there’s no need to write an exposé about the appearance of potbellies. They’re just signaling the end of the brief male fitness trend.
However, Trebay’s confusion about the rise of Ralph Kramdens implies that male fitness is not an aberration—that it’s actually a norm that all these chubby dudes are brazenly subverting.
To add to the confusion, Trebay also quotes a theory that men are only getting fatter because they want to rebel against President Obama’s healthy image.
Yes, that’s what I said.
And then Trebay quotes his own personal trainer, who says that potbellies really aren’t acceptable at all, and that in reality, men want “lean muscle.”
So what’s the takeaway here? That a few guys in ironic t-shirts have been hitting the onion rings, and maybe that’s cool, but maybe not? Yeah. Thanks. Got it.
(2) It locates a “trend” in, like, two blocks of Williamsburg.
Trebay reveals his bias in his second paragraph, when he explains where he’s spotted this supposedly ubiquitous new gut:
[T]he Ralph Kramden is everywhere to be seen lately, or at least it is in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, the McCarren Park Greenmarket and pretty much any place one is apt to encounter fans of Grizzly Bear.
See how he says the Ralph Kramden is “everywhere,” but then immediately acknowledges that by “everywhere,” he really just means a couple of places where he hangs out?
First, as someone who spends a lot of time around the Brooklynites that Trebay describes, I can tell you that there have always been hipsters with potbellies, just like there are plenty of hipsters who don’t have them now. Trebay is willfully ignoring the people who don’t suit his thesis.
But what about the other people he’s ignoring? As in, the millions of New Yorkers who aren’t in Fort Greene?
More than its shoddy thinking, my major problem with this feature is that it continues the obnoxious media trend of mythologizing the “hipster” as some kind of being that everyone in the country cares about. From my experience, most people don’t give a damn about skinny jeans and The Fleet Foxes, but the people who do care about those things all tend to work in the media. Therefore, when writers “discover” trends and styles, they often are just writing about themselves.
I’ve been guilty of solipsistic reporting, but the fact that I’ve done it doesn’t make it okay. When writers assume their immediate surroundings are the universal standard of awesomeness, then cultural criticism becomes a glossy fiction. Six husky dudes at a flea market become headline news, and we all get reduced to navel gazing.
Update: Check out fashion blogger Karen Greco’s excellent piece that links this story with Cintra Wilsons “I hate fat people” slam of J.C. Penney.
(Thanks to my friend Shawn-Marie, who linked to this story on her Facebook page.)
(Photo by Hiroko Masuike)
