This may actually be the point of no return for SCFOM. It may be the spot where we go a bit too far. Why? Because [air quotes] society [end air quotes] says you’re not supposed to go after children.
Well fuck that shit. Children aren’t supposed to dress the way Arlo Weiner dresses. Never — and we mean never – have we loathed a third grader more than we loathe Arlo. Not when we were in third grade; not when we were in first grade; not when we were in fifth grade. It’s completely off the charts how much this eight year old sticks in our craw.
In what will undoubtedly become a recurring endeavor at this website, we’d like to write a bit about why this feature in GQ today — and every single other story that’s ever been written about this self-proclaimed “Dandy” — is representative of everything that’s wrong in journalism and Fat America today.
Arlo Weiner, GQ‘s youngest style correspondent, recently started third grade. If you haven’t been following Arlo, he’s the natty-beyond-his years son of Mad Men creator Matt Weiner. Perhaps inspired by a summer spent at Shakespeare camp (“Talking Shakespearean is really fun.”), Arlo’s recent look sits somewhere between a court jester, the Mad Hatter, and Michael Corleone when he’s pretending to be a Sicilian peasant. This is what we love about Arlo: The kid isn’t afraid to mix and match—or mix and not match.
Really, because that’s actually everything we hate about him. Actually, that’s not true; it’s not true at all. Here’s a list of all the things we hate about him.*
We hate the whole damn thing
We hate that he went to Shakespeare CAMP
We hate that his parents allow him to dress like that
We hate that the media covers it
We hate that he has a better job than we do
We hate that people think his opinion matters
We hate that he’s so smug
We hate that he has an opinion on style in THIRD GRADE
We hate that his opinion on style is so incredibly terrible
We hate that just because his dad is Matt Weiner (the creator of “Mad Men”), people care about this nonsense
We hate that he’s named Arlo
We hate this exchange from the end of the story:
Speaking of which, Arlo’s still undecided as to what he’s going to be [for Halloween]. “I can do this really weird thing with a sweatshirt: I put my legs in the armholes and then I get in a sitting position and stick my head into the top where the hoodie is and it looks really weird. So I’m probably going to be that. Or a toilet.”
And accordingly, we hate that he wants to be a toilet
Most importantly, though, we hate that that no one at his elite private school (supposition) has beaten the fuck out of him.
That said, we’re not encouraging such a beating. We just want him to stop dressing like Oliver Twist.
*Note: PARTIAL
What great rant! Arlo is a douche & his parents are pathetic turds.
never underestimate the importance of a name …