Sentence of the Day.

This is the last sentence of a NYT T Magazine article by Nick Haramis titled, "What’s Behind Fashion’s Rediscovery of the Bare Midriff? It might be that in exposing the waist, designers are also revealing their hope for a bolder and better future." 

Are you ready to diagram (or at least think about diagramming)?

As much as this procession of bare midriffs was a form of immediate wish fulfillment in a time of isolation, uncertainty and protective layers, it was, too, an invocation for the future — an attempt to manifest, by exposing one of our most defenseless, most provocative zones, a future in which we might once again let our guards down and see our bodies not as vessels for disease or targets for injustice but as sources of power.

It's easy to get started:

 

It's a lot of work to complete the diagram, but feel free to jump right into the meaning... if you can. I can get you started on that too. Your midriff is defenseless and provocative — though I have not seen your particular midriff, and it may provoke something quite different from what the toned, sleek runway-model midriffs provoke — but it means something different in the future from what it meant in the past, because in the past we had the isolation of the lockdown, and moving into the future, we're trying to reengage with social life. It's one thing to dream about a defenseless and provocative midriff when you're home alone and can't go out, quite another to venture into the world again — it's hard enough with a fully covered torso — with your bare belly exposed. But what if we could take our defenseless and provocative midriff out in public with a better, stronger attitude, as a source of power? Then it might help us get over our dismal feeling that our body is a vessels for disease or a target for injustice. Maybe! It's all in the mind. Expose the space from the bottom of your breasts to the line reached by low-rise pants. Just get it out there. Think: power!! And then maybe you too will have emerged — truly emerged — from the lockdown.

"When Polka Dots Signal Both Optimism and Disquiet/The motif has long been associated with a certain brand of American cheeriness but, as its recent ubiquity attests, is most visible during times of turbulence."

A headline in T, the NYT Style Magazine, for an article by Nick Haramis.

The history of polka dots. This is the article I want to read. I feel some pressure to write about Biden's 2-hour news conference yesterday, which I watched, but I'm loath to blog it without a complete transcript. I have seen the "5 takeaways" pieces and the "utter disaster!!!" stuff, and it's propaganda on top of propaganda. Until I find a transcript, I'm holding off, I'm in the ellipsis... and therefore: polka dots!

Haramis writes delightfully:

The best example I have ever seen of a NYT article with the comments function disabled.

Here's the link to the article: "Welcome to the Age of the Twink," by Nick Haramis.

The pre-censorship of reader commentary is interesting and perhaps cowardly, but it raises the question why publish the article at all? Why the need to protect this article from criticism?

Now, it really turns into a style piece — not (ostensibly) about a manifestation of gay sexuality at all. There's talk of models and the repeated assurance that some of these men are not gay:

But the latest twinks — many of whom are straight — are what you might call “art twinks,” building upon an aesthetic legacy established by Ryan McGinley’s turn-of-the-millennium photographs of the sloppily skinny, or last decade’s leather-pant-clad Saint Laurent models chosen by the designer Hedi Slimane. And yet they are more culturally mainstream: a growing cohort of famous (and famously small) boys who stand in opposition to the lumbering, abusive oafs who have been dominating this year’s headlines.

Lumbering, abusive oafs... Apparently, according to "Notes on the Culture" — it's the "age of the twink" because we loathe so much of what comes in the form of a man. We're told of a popular music performer whose "whole mien [was] charged with sex" but whom we could nevertheless appreciate because of the "safety in his slimness."

Women, we're told, are "us[ing] their voices to undo [the] legacy of toxic masculinity," and this is changing the culture: "These twinks, after all, aren’t just enviably lean boys or the latest unrealistic gay fantasy, but a new answer to the problem of what makes a man."

Who is Nick Haramis, by the way? There's no biographical note at the page or clickable link on his name. I had to look him up on Wikipedia. He's Senior Features Editor, T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Did he made the decision to publish this in this form and to protect himself from comments?! The Wikipedia article is short, but it contains the line: "Haramis is also a regular on the downtown New York nightlife scene." I could also do a Google image search on him to see if he's a lumbering oaf or a man with a mien of safety and slimness.