Fashion Police Brutality

[Content Note: Violence; misogyny; gender- and body policing.]

I used to really like Tim Gunn, the Project Runway mentor who seemingly has such a supportive way with the designers who compete on the show. But then, in 2011, he decided to publicly gender- and body police Hillary Clinton, because he doesn't like her fashion sense. And, okay, everyone fucks up, I get that, which doesn't mean giving someone a pass on shitty behavior, but I don't want to be forever defined by my worst moment, so I try not to do that to other people if they demonstrate having learned something and exhibit better sensitivity, because we're all on a path and life is not a fixed point etc., but apparently that was not just a bad moment and learning schmearning and Mr. Gunn says no-thank-you to expecting more of him because here we go again:

One person who is decidedly not a fan of [Miley Cyrus'] new look? Tim Gunn!

In Touch caught up with the 60-year-old fashion icon at the Nespresso Pop-up Shop, where he revealed that he's been "horrified" by the 20-year-old's recent fashion choices lately.

So what advice would Tim — who has lent his keen fashion eye to countless aspiring fashion designers on Project Runway — say to Miley? Nothing, apparently!

"I don't think I would say anything to her," he told In Touch. "I think I would haul off and give her a great big bitch slap. She needs to be shocked into listening."

I'm not going to get into a whole thing about Miley Cyrus, in which I could spend as much time on criticisms of her cultural appropriation as I could defending her from slut-shaming, because she is a complex human being in a profoundly fucked-up industry inside an already fucked-up culture, and there is shit she does (and has done) that warrants legitimate criticism and shit that is done to her which warrants legitimate criticism, too.

And the reason I'm not getting into all that is because it's not relevant (except insomuch as public slut-shaming provides the space in which shit like this can seem okay). Nothing that this 20-year-old has done, including and especially wearing clothes or costumes that one doesn't consider fashionable, warrants publicly talking about how she needs to be "bitch-slapped."

No less to be "bitch-slapped" by a man because she is expressing her own creative agency and failing to conform to that man's arbitrary fashion ideals.

Tim Gunn, is that really the message you want to send to young women—conform or be violently abused?

Oh, I know, I know—I'm the Most Humorless Feminist in all of Nofunnington and I don't understand that Tim Gunn was just joking and being catty-misogynist in that "fun" way that some women and gay men think is hilarious and acceptable as if it exists in a vacuum, in total isolation from the terrifying statistics on violence against women.

As if this isn't being disgorged into a culture in which female people aren't already policed and shamed and ostracized and bullied and often violently abused for failing to conform to gendered expectations, including an impossible beauty standard; a culture in which women with deviant personal expression are marginalized, mocked, denied jobs, harmed; a culture in which female people's failure to show deference to men, failure to listen, is frequently met with brutality.

What a great joke.

This is not okay. This is not okay.

Tim Gunn is on Twitter, if you'd like to ask him to stop using "bad fashion" as an excuse for casually engaging in violent misogyny.