Why does Tim Gunn talk like a 16 year old valley girl?

[MrScorpio]

What kind of grown man says something like, "Major wow factor"?

Is that supposed to be cute or something?

[AngryOldDem]

1. If it's the Travelocity commercial you're talking about...

...I think he's just being campy, using fashion show lingo. On Project Runway he doesn't talk in that manner.

[MrScorpio]

2. It's cool that he doesn't

That commercial is positively hokey

[Chan790]

3. I don't know...

before he became a fashion industry insider and director of creativity at Liz Claiborne, he had a successful career as a gallery-shown postmodern artist and as a lecturer at Parsons The New School of Design and never came across that way. He studied here in DC at Corcoran School of Design under Anne Truitt, earning his BFA in sculpture and is originally from DC, born in Chicago. None of that lends itself to speaking like you're from the Valley.

How that makes one talk like he does is beyond me...I'm artsy, live here, took non-credit design classes at Corcoran & I just say "fuck" a lot.

[graywarrior]

4. Ha! I don't care....I watch anything he's in or on.

He's so cute.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. The kind of grown man who gets paid more for a commercial

than you will make in the next five years, easily. Other grown men have been known to say such things as 'fer shizzle' for pretty much the same reason. Think about it.

[MrScorpio]

6. Money makes the world go 'round

Doesn't it?

[AtomicKitten]

7. He's worried you're not making it work.

[MrScorpio]

8. Apparently he's lampooning himself in that commercial

Major parody factor!

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. Like, who?

[MrScorpio]

10. The dude in that travel site commercial

Where people are "designing" travel plans

[applegrove]

11. To attract the same thing a valley girl is trying to attract when she talks like that:

a male. Says something about males doesn't it!

[MrScorpio]

12. I never found Valley girls to be attractive

I've only found them to be annoying.

Valley Girl speak is the empty calories of lingua franca

[applegrove]

14. I know from personal experience there is a big difference between

what a 16 year old boy will be attracted to vs. and 18 year old boy. I think the valley girly girl appeals to the former.

[applegrove]

13. Delete, wrong place.

[Odin2005]

15. I'm a 25yo guy and I've said "major wow factor".

:shrug:

[MrScorpio]

16. Isn't it easier just to say, "Wow"?

I just that that isn't hip enough

[6000eliot]

17. He seems like a nice guy and all,

but I just don't get the language of fashion (or fashion, for that matter). It all seems so silly and superficial to me.

[MrScorpio]

18. Gunn isn't the problem at all

It's just the form of empty caloric language that that commercial just seems to exploit. After seeing it fives times in one day… A day that I was really irritable because I was working on my show all night long, I just had enough of it. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't care. My mood changes drastically when I tired and irritable to say the least.

Yes, you're right, it is an example of a type superficial language. Superficial language is one of my pet peeves. I can't tell you how much overhearing banal small talk annoys the shit out of me. Frankly, I don't understand the purpose of treating superficial language so seriously.

Not only do I NOT understand that, I don't understand why other people have gone out of their way to be argumentative merely for purpose of being argumentative. Especially over such a superficial matter. That hasn't happened here in the Lounge, but you can just imagine where else this thread has popped up as a matter for causing discord.

Gunn's a great guy for sure, no doubt… But I doubt that I could last five minutes in any industry that has such an affinity for silly and superficial language and treats with so much regard.