I really want to like Ed Young. Don't get me wrong: he stands for virtually everything I find offensive. But still, dude's pro-boning. Yeah, yeah - under his rules you have to be a "married" heterosexual Christian couple in order to get in on the holy foreplay, but I got to give it up for the opportunistic muff hound. Watching this hysterical Youtube video featuring Grapevine Fellowship Church's head stud is the closest I'm going to get to a religious experience this year. So, jimmy hat off to ya, Pastor.
In fact, I love this guy so much, I have a Google alert for whenever his name pops up in the news. (*Not a true statement, though I'm now considering it.) And, pop up again he has, this man of the cloth. That's right - Young has officially launched a fashion blog, pastorfashion.com.
Young's blog defends fashion as not only totally masculine - as it turns out, Jesus turned water into testosterone - but, also way hip and cool and a field in which Christians should totally be leading the pack. He's even settled a small point of contention among the Dallas arts community, which was recently as February yet debating the role of fashion in art. Pastor Young says, "God created color, God created design. He created things that look nice and we're simply doing what he wants us to do."
Well, if "he" is into color and design and fashion, then I can only deduce that Gaultier at the DMA this winter was, despite its detractors, sanctified by God. What, it's in the Bible. (For the record, I'm firmly in the fashion-is-art camp).
Young has even released ten ... oh, let's call them "rules" of fashion, set in stone, in which he suggests that you must "never have more than one button of your shirt unbuttoned unless you are Bono!" And, "Never wear square-toe shoes. Square toe shoes are from the Devil."
If square-toe shoes are from the devil, can we talk about rhinestone encrusted crosses and getting them exorcised from popular culture?
Look, I'm not hating on folks of faith - or saying that Pastor Young is all bad, for that matter. Hell, he's like a less terrifying Gary Busey in skinny jeans - hard to dislike that. But, Young's transparent materialism and capitalistic exploitation of "looking good while changing the world" is flimsy at best. You want to know what fashion can do? Let's talk Fashion Delivers, the Oxfam Fashion Team, Fashion For a Passion and SMU's annual charity fashion show.
I wanna be with you on this one, Pastor. I really, truly want Christians to stop dressing like this. But, you've got a private jet, dude. It seems just a little disingenuous to marry faith and fashion without regard for those who have bigger problems than a mere "swagger" deficiency.
