Eye on America's Bogus Trends
There's a 1980 Calvin Trillin book called Floater. It's a short, fun comic novel about working at a newsmagazine — the protagonist is a "floater," someone who fills in wherever he's needed each week — and it brilliantly captures some of the standard ridiculousness of life in newsmagland.
One of the running bits is a trend story on two-thirds stockings. No one knows if these stockings extend two-thirds down the leg from the waist or two-thirds up from the foot, but a story is nevertheless found, because, as the book explains, that's how a newsweekly works: An editor hears of this alleged and trivial trend and assigns it; because it's a trivial trend, it's a assigned to a low-ranking writer, who doesn't have the pull to question it; the writer sends out a query to the bureaus, where it's fielded by interns and young reporters, who wouldn't dare report back that the trend doesn't exist. So the reporters find — or make up — something, the writer writes up what they report, the story appears in the magazine, then people reading about it and start wearing two-thirds stockings, and, lo, now it's a trend.
We say this all as preface to a trend story on CBSNews.com today, about an "Eye-Gazing Party," a new singles idea that's sort of like speed-dating, except that you don't talk, just gaze into each other's eyes. Just one thing to keep in mind, notwithstanding the implication of the headline, which announces "a new singles dating idea." That's technically true, but so's this: It only happened once.
Which, at least, is more than could be said for the two-thirds stockings.
