Haute Couture isn’t really my thing. I get too much of my clothes at Target.
Just probably, however, I may understand a bit more about fashion than I know about gaming and the metaverse.
Last month on NPR there was an interview with a Croatian designer of virtual fashion. Yes, it’s a real thing. To ears like mine, it sounded like pure hokum, truly a modern version of the emperor’s new clothes. But Gala Marija Vrbanic designs virtual or cyber clothes. You wear it in photos, but you don’t really own an actual piece of clothing.
Vrbanic explained that she noticed how certain fashionistas buy high-end clothing, post pictures of themselves wearing it on social media, and then resell the clothes at only the slightest loss. Moreover, gamers apparently spend considerable sums to dress their avatar in all the latest and coolest. Who knew? It suggests there is a market for virtual fashion. All of the cachet. None of the laundry. Less of the cost.
It seems somewhere between silly and stupid. Vain. Decadent. Wasteful. Indulgent. But not any more so than about 1000 other things we blithely accept.
It was what Vrbanic said next that troubled me more. The interviewer pressed her about the future. “What’s next? Where might this lead?” Vrbanic suggested that it’s anyone’s guess. Our imaginations are too confined to begin even to explore where cyber fashion and virtual realities might lead.
She hypothesized that the day may soon come when people can present not just virtual fashion, but virtual selves. In the metaverse, a person might choose to be perceived as a flamingo or perhaps a flame.
This sort of creeped me out. A world where walking toward me would be Bob the squid or Liz the blossom. I guess I would know that Bob and Liz were human, but I wouldn’t know what they actually looked like. I suppose we could also present ourselves as virtual people, with virtual hair plugs or a nose job. Could I make it so people I don’t like would look like pigs or snakes or little red devils to me?
It all felt wrong, unnatural, the breaking down of important categories. I could sense my mind spinning through theological arguments and biblical themes to express my deep concerns. Maybe I-Thou. Maybe the Incarnation or imago Dei. Maybe just “do not bear false witness.” It simply isn’t “right” for people — human beings, mind you — to present themselves as flamingos or flames.
Then I took a deep breath.
As we age, we encounter more and more things that strike us as odd and untenable. They’re things that make us feel off balance and old, irrelevant and unprepared for the future.
Additionally, I know that by temperament I am a “nein-er.” My first inclination is almost always skepticism, distrust, criticism, No!
I wonder if what I recognize in myself isn’t a tendency in many of us. I try to devalue those things that make me feel uncomfortable, out of my depth, and frankly — devalued, myself. In my case, rather than face my anxiety, I am prone to go straight to my stash of theological weapons. In a world of actual and virtual, my insecurities are actual and my theological opposition is virtual.
Looking back, we laugh at the trivial things that Christians have felt a need to stand against. Men with long hair. Women with short hair. Men with earrings. Women in pants. Kids and rock-n-roll. Should we add cyber fashion to the list? Far more serious, oppressive, and actually evil was opposition to interracial marriage or integrated education, women receiving an education or working outside the home. Certainly, you can come up with more examples.
I’m not saying that we Christians, especially we olderish Christians, should give a free-pass to every cultural change and future development. I see no danger of that ever happening. Instead I’m suggesting we first might want to check our own reactivity and discomfort. What is really beneath it? Moreover, be assured that society looks through our theological smokescreens to see our real insecurities and fears. Not only do we look like weak and frightened ninnies, the Gospel is discredited by our inability to cope.
Virtual fashion isn’t in my future. I still don’t like the consumerism and materialism (the materialism of something virtual? Hmmm.) But maybe it is an actual reminder of our resistance to those developments that make us feel passé or ill at ease, and then — of our tendency to weaponize the Gospel in defense of ourselves.
