I was browsing one of my local bookstores and it hit me: there are a terrifying number of books in the how-to-do-stuff section (cooking, art, fashion, etc) that aren’t how-to books at all, in the traditional sense.
A traditional how-to book is aimed at someone with a goal: learn watercolour painting. Understand the pecularities of breadmaking. Make stuff out of wood. It then helps you learn how to do those things. Fairly straightforward.
A good chunk of them have been replaced by how-not-to books; books that feature (almost invariably) groups of well-styled (subtext: gay) men pulling faces about your horrible interior design, dress sense, or whatever. It’s as though the market for people who want to do things is being replaced by the market for people whose only goal is to avoid being criticised by roaming cadres of obnoxious homosexuals. It’s kind of an underwhelming thought.
(And, as an aside, I’m sure if I were a gay man I wouldn’t be at all irked by the complete lack of cultural representations that do not involve being (a) a substitute boyfriend do fucked up heterosexual women or (b) a spiteful, nasty, effeminate little queen whose value to society lies in being enourmously rude about decor.)
