Outside the Beltway

Fashion-Crazy Bloggers

James Joyner · Friday, May 11, 2007 · 3 comments

Dan Drezner rightly makes fun of a NYT piece criticizing bloggers for our wild enthusiasm for the latest beauty products.

Natasha Singer, the object of Drezner’s ridicule, has fallen into the all-too-common mainstream media trap of lumping all blogs together. Usually, it takes the form of pretending that some teenager’s rantings on MySpace are indistinguishable from serious political commentators. In this case, Singer makes the mistake of extrapolating from the handful of bloggers she reads (in this case, fashion bloggers) and making generalized statements.

For the record, the closest I get to a “facial” is semi-daily shaving followed by application of a lotion. (I’ve never written any “wildly enthusiastic prose” about Z Zegna After Shave Balm but I recommend it highly.) Coincidentally, I met Megan McArdle at a Reason happy hour last night but there was no discussion about nail polish.

UPDATE: Dave Weigel provides photographic evidence of said meeting:

And also my lack of enthusiasm for beauty products.