I don't know a whole lot about fashion, but one rule that's been ingrained in me was this: you either show cleavage or legs, never both, because that's overkill. More skin is not more. A rule that applied as much to club outfits as to office uniform picks.

Scrolling through what's trending fashion items on the feeds, one quickly realizes people don't adhere to the rule anymore. If anything, they go by sex sells...

Not everyone is taking it to the extremes that Kanye pushed his ex-girlfriend, Amber Rose, to — having her tiptoe essentially naked on the red carpets of the world — a spectacle to incite sexual desires in all the other guys seeing her, with nothing left to the imagination.

Presenting her proudly like a breeder might show off their show poodle’s long legs, meticulously cut hair, and perfectly shaped snout.

Those in denial might evoke erotics, but there was nothing erotic about it. It was pornographic, reducing her to just a collection of body parts, devoid of the person behind. The person behind has since explained that she’d feel sad, and used to hate how he made her dress.

That being said, it’s shocking how many women, seemingly (on algorithm-driven feeds anyway), have chosen to lean into similar tendencies. The office siren trends follow the same pattern, featuring countless creators posing in outfits that you’d expect to see in the roleplay section of a sex shop, not in any cubicle office with stale air, which explains how the few that went to an office like that often got fired (that too however makes for good content so they should look at the bright side)

Short skirts exposing buttchecks, going by the name bubble skirts, have become appropriate wear for Disney World visits (apparently so), and even pupils at schools aren’t safe anymore from seeing more than they’d ever desired from their teachers.

It’s worth noting that America appears to be the most advanced in these trends. It makes sense considering how other countries tend to be more collectivist. Take, for example, Japan, where you'd most definitely be made to sit in a corner and never be talked to again if you showed up like that to the office.

The silent treatment but corporate.

There’s an argument that this is about female empowerment, but is dressing largely to impress teenage boys really all that?

Chances are, a lot of these super sexy teacher or office siren videos are less about inspiring the girlies, and more about… anyway.

To be honest, people can dress as they wish, but I have a caveat.

That’s context.

Why would grown women have to wear skirts so short they can’t even sit down without their bare 🍑 s imprint remaining on the seat once they get up again at a place that’s first and foremost for families, like Disney World or a preschool?

There are times and places for specific fashion, but in an age where social media feeds dictate the quickly cycling micro-trends, it appears that what works for the feed versus the real world isn’t all that clear anymore to people.

As someone good at what they do, dressing like a red-light district worker on duty achieves quite the opposite of being valued for actual work. What message are the office sirens really sending? At best, they’ve never stepped foot into an office before. At worst, the best way they can express their worth is through what works on the feed. Well congrats.

It’s not that deep — some will argue — but I think it is. How we present ourselves to the world always communicates something, whether we like it or not.

Isn’t it a sign of decency to dress appropriately for the circumstances, and with a little regard for the people one will encounter?

A non-empirical analysis based on the sample size of women I talked to about their sexual encounters in the past 13-ish years has shown that it’s quite common for guys to proceed to acts they’ve not bothered to ask consent for.

I understand that there’s both implicit and explicit consent, and that might be hard to navigate at times.

This goes for sexual harassment in clubs, which appears so familiar; I’ve barely met any woman who hasn’t had at least one such moment, but it leaves an even more haunting experience when encountered in a relationship, where one was under the impression that the other respected and deeply cared for you.

The incredulous looks when you deny them that, reacting with a “what the fuck” to their “I just wanted to switch things up” or worse, use their physical advantage to impose themselves, your pleas and sobs just etching them on.

Yes, this is r*pe and we should call it that regardless of the context. As impossible as it might be to prosecute it legally if it happens between partners.

Experiment as much as you want between consenting adults, but just assuming that anyone goes because the other one has agreed to end up in this naked, vulnerable spot with you… nah.

Here we are. I wanted to talk about decency, and somehow ended up talking about the influence of porn. I do attribute quite a bit of the treatment of others to a lack of respect and decency — in bed and elsewhere.

And what’s that if not acknowledging the others’ person, humanity, and the dignity we’re therefore obliged to honor. Porn is just at the frontier of highlighting such behaviors.

I’m barely the first to make such an observation. Chris Hedges, in his Empire of Illusions, long before Only Fans Empire rose to grandeur, explains that “porn is not about love or eroticism. It’s about power and money.”

He further goes on..

“Porn glorifies the cruelty and domination of sexual exploitation in the same way popular culture, glorifies the domination and cruelty of war.

It is the same disease… It is the belief that ‘because I have the ability to use force and control to make others do as I please, I have a right to use this force and control.’

It’s the disease of corporate and imperial power. It extinguishes the sacred and the human to worship power, control, force and pain.”

More than a decade later, and we all know some random British girl’s name because she’s set out to sleep with as many men as possible — selling this as her road to self-worth, and finally finding her self-esteem. I’m sorry, what?!

The language she used to describe this record-breaking exercise later, as some journalists noted, was more akin to soldiers reporting from a battlefield, including detachment, a common way to deal with trauma.

We talk about her, but what about the men?

Well, I don’t know. And also, I didn’t want to really talk all this much about sexualization and self-objectification, but it just happened to be on my mind.

Maybe because, as the algos change up their game, and there’s a lot of competition, there’s very little unique edge left to succeed, and the way to maximum success might be paved with the clothes and strips of dignity and decency.

Such is the violence of turning ourselves into just another commodity.

It opens Pandora’s box to treat other humans as just a side character in your movie, an audience to admire your sexual attractiveness (bubble skirts, office sirens) a tool for your pleasure (see gooning), a stepping stone to greater success (Logan Paul and the dead people in the suicide forest), an inconvenience (when asked to wait until others exit the train before entering yourself or the whole genre of influencers complaining about being treated like a normal person).

It becomes all about power and money.

That's not a very human way to go about life. It's quite undignified, yet it's sold to us as liberation.

That's how all of this ties together.

It's just different flavors of how human values, such as dignity and decency, lose out once they are pulled down to the arena of the market—Marx's crippled monstrosity.

In his book about decency, Alex Hacke laments that we lack a clear vision of how we as individuals want to be in the lives of others. Looking at idolized entrepreneurs and influencers does very little to provide such a vision.

The people who might nudge us in the right direction, however, lack the visibility.

As this German author concludes, the people who help without much ado, and treat those they encounter as fellow human beings, not merely tolerated; for already Goethe knew that tolerance is just the first step, it should really be respect; are extremely important because they offer orientation for those who are insecure and easily manipulated.

The issue arises when we live in a world of the spectacle, where we are inundated with messaging about how unique, special, and powerful we all individually are, entitled to everything, blinded to the little acts of kindness, of sacrifice in the name of what's the right thing to do.

I know the freedom individualist maxis hate this, but I believe we all owe each other a little bit of decency.

Thanks for reading.

If there was to be a CTA here, it'd be that well.. you can't change others, so might as well start with the very simple imperatives of treating others as you'd like to be treated, with dignity, with respect, and... occasionally, with a little grace even if it means putting up with a little inconvenience yourself (Such as, when giving up your seat to an elderly after a long day walking around, telling the cafe owner whose card terminal just failed to not stress about it, and transfer the money on the spot instead without making a scene etc.)

That's not to say to put up with abusive, narcissistic pricks.

We might respectfully remove ourselves and call out their shitty behavior.

It doesn't have to happen on a public platform, though. Certain things are best dealt with in private.

Cover Image: Opening sequence for The Night Walker (William Castle, 1964)