In post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, skeptical voters demand full disclosure of everything from candidates’ finances to their medical records, and spin-savvy accounts of backstage machinations dominate political coverage. – Virginia Postrel
At the basic consumer level, the profusion of fonts appeals to a culture that celebrates expressive individualism. – Virginia Postrel
Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion. – Virginia Postrel
In ‘The Future and Its Enemies,’ I argue that individual creativity and enterprise are not only personally satisfying but socially good, producing progress and happiness. For celebrating creativity and happiness, I have been called a fascist by critics on both coasts. – Virginia Postrel
Some of the higher price of L.A. real estate does reflect the intrinsic pleasure of living there, as I’m reminded every time I walk out my door into the perfect weather. – Virginia Postrel
Lofts were never supposed to be homes. They were vacant old factories and warehouses, taken over by artists looking for cheap space and good light. – Virginia Postrel
The growth of medical expenditures in the U.S. is not caused by administrative costs but by increases in the technical intensity of care over time – a.k.a. medical progress. – Virginia Postrel
Glamour invites us to live in a different world. It has to simultaneously be mysterious, a little bit distant – that’s why, often in these glamour shots, the person is not looking at the audience, it’s why sunglasses are glamorous – but also not so far above us that we can’t identify with the person. – Virginia Postrel
Glamour is a beautiful illusion – the word ‘glamour’ originally meant a literal magic spell – that promises to transcend ordinary life and make the ideal real. It depends on a special combination of mystery and grace. Too much information breaks the spell. – Virginia Postrel
Kidney donors don’t have to be close relatives of recipients, but they do need to have the right blood type. And kidneys from living donors tend to last many years longer than kidneys from deceased donors. – Virginia Postrel
Standardized sizes made inexpensive, off-the-rack garments economically feasible. They gave shoppers a reliable guide to finding clothes in self-service shops. – Virginia Postrel
As a general rule, durable-goods production tends to be the most volatile sector of the economy. Since people usually have a stock of durables in use, when times get tight, they put off new purchases. What seem like small cutbacks to the end buyer translate into big swings for the producer. – Virginia Postrel
Rich people in poor places want to show off their wealth. And their less affluent counterparts feel pressure to fake it, at least in public. Nobody wants the stigma of being thought poor. – Virginia Postrel
Cinema isn’t just a good medium for translating graphic novels. It’s specifically a good medium for superheroes. On a fundamental, emotional level, superheroes, whether in print or on film, serve the same function for their audience as Golden Age movie stars did for theirs: they create glamour. – Virginia Postrel
Fit experts envision a future in which you’d carry your body scan in your cell phone or on a thumb drive, using the data to order clothes online or find them in stores. But who’s going to pay for all those scanners, which cost about $35,000 each, and the staff to run them? – Virginia Postrel
Y2K hype taps our native discomfort with the realities of a dynamic, evolving social order. It elevates personal, local contact over the impersonality of the ‘extended order’ of trade and technological networks. It suggests that we can wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. – Virginia Postrel
Even before Sputnik, scientists and policy makers worried that not enough Americans were studying science. – Virginia Postrel
The Taliban outlawed wearing polish in the late 1990s, punishing some offenders by amputating a fingertip. Importing polish was banned only in July 2001, which suggests that women were still wearing painted nails within the safety of their homes. – Virginia Postrel
Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration, and aspiration. It evokes an audience’s hopes and dreams and makes them seem attainable, all the while maintaining enough distance to sustain the fantasy. – Virginia Postrel
Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When kidneys fail, they generally fail together; barring trauma or cancer, there’s not much advantage to a backup.) The main risk to the donor is the risk of any surgery. – Virginia Postrel
Cosmetics makers have always sold ‘hope in a jar’ – creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love for the women who use them. – Virginia Postrel
A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become sources of alienation, unhappiness, even self-loathing. If no jeans fit, you’ll feel uncomfortable or inferior. If no housing developments reflect your taste for unique architecture, you’ll write screeds against philistine mass culture. – Virginia Postrel
The Internet’s abundance – of information, goods, tastes and sources of authority – creates unparalleled opportunities for individuals to get exactly what they want. But this plenitude threatens political and cultural authorities who believe in telling individuals what they can have rather than letting them choose for themselves. – Virginia Postrel
By giving unusual people an easy way to find one another, the Internet has also enabled them to pool rare talents, resources, and voices, then push their case into public consciousness. The response, in many cases, is a kind of hysteria. – Virginia Postrel
I like kids, but I don’t expect to have any of my own. I’m 40 years old and spend most of my time working. I’d be a terrible mother. – Virginia Postrel
Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn’t think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses for new inventions. When a new product appears, it can uncover dissatisfactions and desires no one knew were there. – Virginia Postrel
We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedral or writing a novel requires stone and mortar or paper and ink). – Virginia Postrel
