Met with Criticism

I’m allergic to complaints about the Met Gala.

The Met Gala is fashion’s Superbowl. 

I would go so far to say that the Met Gala is the gay Superbowl, but RuPaul’s Drag Race has relentlessly held that title for over a decade now, transforming the queer and queer-adjacent community into a vaguely less-threatening version of the guy who shows up at football games shirtless, in facepaint, black-out drunk on Bud Light with Lime, and screaming– as if the queer community had nothing better to scream about.

Speaking of screaming football fans– have you met these people? As a both a queer and  fashion person, I must admit I have not, so I am forced to write this next part from a sterotype perpetuated by outdated macho sitcom characters, and tv commercials (usually the kind about tv): Perpetual teeshirt-wearing rage-fueled men (and women) who would live on mini corndogs and bottled nacho cheese sauce if given the opportunity, hollering at their television sets like it’s their job, and reminding me more and more of the people I see hollering on the internet each year about the Met Gala, potentially also in-between indulging in fistfulls of miniature corn dogs.

You see: There’s a wrong way and a right way to critique the looks at the Met Gala, and the wrong ways are as follows:

1. I would never wear this, and therefore I hate it.

2. If I were a rich and famous person I would never wear this, and therefore I hate it.

3. I have read too much into the theme and I’ve decided I’m smarter than every single person that actually got invited to design a look for the Met Gala and therefore I am here to tell you that everybody is wrong, I am right, and therefore I hate it.

Sometimes I'm not sure that people fully understand what the Met Gala actually is. Contrary to the popular belief that it is some kind of celebrity gladiator challenge set up for us plebeians to sit in the bleachers and throw stones at, I’m here to tell you– that ain’t it.

In reality, the Met Gala is actually just an annual fundraiser to benefit the Met Museum’s Costume Institute.  Which is a fancy way of saying– the Met Museum has a really important archive of real human clothing dating back centuries that takes a lot of effort and energy to store properly (the blouse you had to iron for the 5th time this month is side eyeing you from your closet floor right now), and using the money generated from this fundraiser each year, they put on an annual public exhibit where you can literally go stare at all the beautiful old clothing for hours at the affordable price of suggested donation (yes, the Met is one of the few museums that will never turn you away for not having your shit together– wrinkled blouse and all). 

You can go to the Met Gala if you sign over your first born, or the more popular option– a cool multi-thousand dollar check to the costume department. You can also go if you’re a relevant celebrity clad in a look an equally relevant designer has come up with for you to wear. 

It’s true– designers are invited by the museum to create looks for the theme and the designers each choose a notable personality to wear what they come up with. It’s kind of like those city initiatives that give artists sculptures of pigs to paint and decorate any way they like, and then the sculptures are displayed on streets downtown. I actually can’t think of any way in which the Met Gala is unlike the painted pigs, so clearly it’s the perfect metaphor and I’m leaving it in. 

Anyway, only some of the celebrities donate money to the Gala itself, but by attending, they donate their time in order to draw attention and celebration to the Gala– aka, literally the reason you even know about it in the first place. Thank goodness for those jolly painted pigs.

And that’s where I come in swinging– actually I’ve been swinging for several years according to this status update I made in 2019, and my arms are tired:

I realized this week that I still feel the exact same way after finding myself heatedly defending Kim K– of all people, on a Facebook thread as if she were my personal pal. Reading mean commentary on photos from the Met Gala makes me feel the way I do when I read stuffy comments on Gucci advertisement threads written by people who not only “Just don’t get it” but who also fit into my fourth category of wrong ways to complain about the Met Gala:

4. I am the sort of person that likes to think of myself as “above” fashion, and yet I still have a very particular idea about the type of sneakers, jeans, and T-shirts that I choose to put on my body, and therefore I hate it.

These are the worst kind of fashion critics and yet somehow the most rampant. This is a personality flaw that turns up everywhere, and not just where fashion is concerned– people who can’t, won’t, and would never dare to try a thing, and yet have an extremely detailed opinion on how everyone who IS doing the thing is doing it wrong. Pot, meet kettle. Stone, meet glass house. No, neither of those are what Madonna wore on the Met Gala carpet this year.

Damn, look– fashion is art, okay? I know art is meant to inspire opinions, but when your opinion is that art should just go away forever, maybe it’s time to log off Twitter for the evening. I might be taking all this personally after enduring years of having unsolicited photos snapped of me while riding the subway, dad-types making tired St. Patrick’s Day jokes when my hair’s been green, or random strangers “ugh”ing at me on the street for going about my business innocently dressed as a human-shaped disco ball that got lost in a flower factory. 

I don’t question my artistic process.  I do, however, question people who put more effort into hating beautiful and interesting things than they do creating beautiful and interesting things. Unless you’ve hacked the system in some way that allows you to never wear clothes again, we all have to face the fact that fashion is something we’re taking part in on a daily basis, and if others are doing a more clever job of it than you, don’t ruin a good thing with an obnoxious opinion.

Which brings me to reason number 5 that people might hate the Met Gala and in my mind, the only valid reason I can get behind:

5. I am a nudist and seeing people wear clothing of any kind fills me with a deep sense of discomfort, and therefore I hate it. 

To the truly fashion adverse– I see you– maybe a bit too much of you– and I salute you. But to the keyboard warriors spewing vitriol all over one of the most interesting and well intended fashion events of the year, I think I speak for many of us when I say: stop cramping our style.