Letters: Foreclosures, ‘rugged’ menswear
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: It has been a busy week: We had elections, a big Fed meeting. And the foreclosure crisis, as we talked about earlier keeps on going.
Erin Haynes of Rockville, Md. is tired of hearing about how bad home owners have it.
Erin Haynes: During the housing market boom and bust, I was living on $18,000 a year and I couldn’t afford a house. So instead, I lived in a tiny apartment with a bunch of roommates so that I could afford to sock away a little bit of money each month to invest in my retirement.
Rick Asam from Presque Isle, Maine points out that there are opportunities, perhaps, to be had with all those foreclosed homes.
Rick Asam: Whatever happened to the entrepreneurial spirit? They have housing units. We have a growing number of working homeless people. Fix the gutters. Paint the houses. Rent them! Banks could help neighborhoods, help the economy and protect their investments.
I talked to fashion editor Kate Betts the other day. We were talking abouthow the economy is putting the “rugged” back in men’s clothing. Feedback was mostly positive — until Jessica Ostrower weighed in from San Clemente, Calif.
Jessica Ostrower: This reflects such a simplistic and problematic concept of what it means to be a man and consequently, manly. And Betts’s comments about models being “more beefy” and “American-looking” were equally problematic.
Also in fashion news, my comment about fan favorite Mondo Guerra’s loss on “Project Runway” struck a nerve. Mary Ruth Shields teaches fashion Lincoln College of New England in Connecticut. Her take is that Mondo getting the boot represents a sell-out, she says, to the forces that think the consumer either doesn’t know any better or wants to look like everyone else. So there.
And finally, an apology to Aselda Thompson from The Woodlands, Texas. Much as I complained a couple of weeks ago about my local “All Things Considered” host ruining a baseball playoff game for me by giving the score before I had a chance to watch it on TiVo at home later that evening, so I apparently did the same for Aselda and “Project Runway.” So Aselda, mea culpa. It won’t happen again.
If you have comments, fashionable or otherwise, send them our way.
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