Sadly fashion isn’t really much safer. Women still wear absurd shoes with toes that compress their feet and heels that damage their feet and spines. Women buy a wide variety of cosmetics that, while less toxic than heretofore, are still unsuitable for contact with skin. Soaps and perfumes often contain volatile aromatics that irritate the skin and can, in some cases, result in lesions or severe rashes. And it wasn’t so long ago that women were falling off platform shoes, snapping ankles and causing all manner of other damage. Today we have people covering themselves in tattoos, having sacs of saline or silicone implanted in their breasts, enduring pointless liposuction, having nose jobs, injecting botox into their faces, and having collagen likewise injected into sensitive tissues. We’ve only just stopped utilizing breast implants that resulted in cancer. Oh, and let’s not forget the “revirgining” surgery to “repair” hymens and “tighten” the vaginal opening.

Fashion is, in essence, all about signaling that one is too wealthy to care about practicality. Hence fashion is always absurd and very often harmful. Alas, the desire of people to “be fashionable” seems forever unabated regardless of the absurdities and the risks.