Tom Wolfe’s tenets of New Journalism includes “status life,” which is “the entire pattern of behavior and possessions through which people express their position in the world, or what they think it is, or what they hope it to be,” which I can think/say/write verbatim after teaching an infinity number of Creative Journalism classes (the only other thing I can do that for is one Philip Larkin poem and the word “antidisestablishmentarianism,” which every annoying piece-of-turd kid is going to have down). If you are like me and are over-attuned to the meaning of things, then you’ll be relieved to know that staying in is totally exempt from status life and its cultural superstructure, which is “status culture.” This is because everyone’s primo stay-at-home clothes have nothing to do with their other stuff and all its signs and symbols. My favorite jammies are a pair of waffle long-underwear I got at a discount store called Giant Tiger that only exists in the worst Canadian towns and cities, and a top that my brother used to ski in. See? It’s like in high school when clothes were essentially communal and I want to cry just thinking about how much I want that back, and not just when I am shuffling between bed and the bathtub.
—Kate Carraway, Girls and Staying In. See also: Georg Simmel’s 190whatever essay, “Fashion”
