The Real Difference between NYC and SF (or “Why I Think the Olsen Twins are Hot”)

There comes a point in every relationship I have where inevitably, the Olsen twins — specifically, my love for them — comes up, causing a rift so great, I suddenly question the very foundations of our bond. It hasn’t always been this way. I never watched “Full House” as a kid, in part because my parents were too intelligent (“Dinosaurs” was a different story altogether). In my freshman year of college, I expressed disgust at the many fellow 18-year-olds excitedly counting down the days until the Olsen twins were legal (~1400, or approximately 3 years, making them 15 at the time). It wasn’t that I was grossed out at the age difference — as a 15-year-old, I often dreamed of being Milla Jovovich not because I’d be an other-worldly beautiful millionaire, but because I’d get to make out with a then-42-year-old Bruce Willis in a futuristic hibernation chamber while scientist wryly giggled a few feet away. (Eighteen years later, I’m still too young for Korben Dallas.) It was that these gross, meat-headed midwestern frat boys loved the Olsen twins for all the wrong reasons. They didn’t love them like I did.

“There are two hairstyles [in Seattle]: short gray hair and long gray hair.”

- Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

This past Saturday, I put on my best West Coast facade, and took a delightful trip to northern Sonoma county with some dear coworkers, for a day of refined wine tasting and shameful overeating. It was by sheer luck that my team of colleagues was comprised of the most fashion-forward individuals, in an office rife with free t-shirts and year-round sandals. Most modern companies, tech or otherwise, are revered for their lax dress codes, especially from those who have experienced the drudgery and financial strain of formal business wear. But most modern expats have stopped at nothing to complain about yet another comfortable advancement of the Pacific Northwest. I am one of those expats.

Amidst the remarkable fall foliage — grape leaves having turned anywhere from the color of sunshine to the deep red of the very wine they produce — my favorite part by far of the ride up was the brilliant kvetch session I had with my coworker’s elegant French wife over the severe lack of fashion in the Bay Area.

“Sometimes I find I buy things simply because I miss shopping… and then of course, I can never wear them,” she said at one point, in her thick, envy-inducing French accent. “Of course…” I agreed, readjusting my knee-length, weather-inappropriate puffer jacket to cover the frayed edges of my years-old, second-hand shirt. I vowed to burn everything I owned the minute I got home.

While I lived in NYC, my roommate (and co-writer of this blog) used to refer to my style as “homeless chic”. Or maybe I added the “chic” part. Regardless, I attributed much of the (fashionable-)raggedness of the clothes I wore to my lack of sufficient income, but like many Bay Area dwellers, didn’t give my wardrobe a much needed facelift even 3.5 years after receiving a living wage. I still fill most of my closet with finds from clothing swaps and thrift stores, and long for the culture of Park Slope, where picking up clothes off the street was commonplace and not just relegated to those on a freegan-ist environmental mission (I know, gross). The fact is, though, my wardrobe has gone from homeless chic, to just plain homeless (which was still kind of interesting), to just plain boring. It’s no surprise that my friend Harry, an extremely gay fellow New York expat, described his current style as “sensible lesbian — semi-fashionable, dual-purpose, always ready to do heavy lifting, if need be.”

I’m painting an incomplete picture here. You could easily argue that the Pacific Northwest is full of people who have overcome the silly obsession with aesthetics and prioritized hard work and innovation over Fashion Week, developing products and services that have solved many of the (first) world’s problems. It’s no surprise that Steve Jobs’s signature monotonous look was a product of his relentless quest to remain undistracted from his revolutionary work. Furthermore, in a tenuous extension of aesthetics, I often blame the lack of accessible art on the abundance of natural beauty — why waste a day in a stuffy museum when you can watch the Pacific Ocean crash its massive waves into majestic cliffs just a couple of miles down the road? And maybe Harry was right — we lived in a place so pleasantly versatile that a happy hour was just as likely to spring up unexpectedly as an impromptu rock climb. Why let your attire restrict your options?

Not to mention NYC’s obsession with beauty is far from healthy. I had a rude awakening one night while up late refreshing Grub Street one more time, when I got an IM from a friend — “Do you think if I started smoking, I’d lose weight?” Without even blinking, I wrote back, “I mean… probably?” Luckily, my friend remains a non-smoker today. But she also ended up moving to Philly.

But what does any of this have to do with the Olsen twins?

This has everything to do with the Olsen twins.

I recently started a job as a product manager at a tech company, and hear various iterations of the 80/20 rule, most often that you should aim to cover 80% of cases with 20% effort, refraining from allocating significantly more effort to cover 100% of the cases. This is a variant of the law of diminishing returns, and is by and large, a sensible goal.

There is nothing sensible about the Olsen twins.

There is no doubt in my mind that they would put in 100 extra hours of work a week if it meant becoming not the 11th, but the 10th richest women in entertainment (per Forbes). They would slay condors if it meant tousling their hair more effectively (yet appearing more effortlessly). They stand for everything over-the-top New York, good and bad — rumored drug habits, battles with eating and attention-deficit disorders, outrageous work-ethic since the age of nine months, resemblance to a hot alien, and being by and large, the pinnacle of homeless chic.

In a further testament to their perfection, on top of their 110% hyper-success, they remained predominantly out of the public eye* while achieving it, as if to say, “What, oh us? Oh yeah, we were here the whole time, just doubling our already-sizeable fortune while becoming international muses. You were masturbating alone in the midwest the whole time, right?” In a time where entire channels (plural) are dedicated to airing the downfall of celebrities by way of reality shows, they would be prime candidates for such a fate. But they never did it. They were dorky kids when it was appropriate to be a dorky kid, and they were fashion icons when it was appropriate to be a fashion icon, never blurring the two. They never made us feel uncomfortable with showing too much skin; on the contrary, choosing instead to highlight their deceptively diminutive stature under a swath of unseasonable layers. If I had all the money in the world, I would dress exactly like the Olsen twins. I would adopt an Olsen twin. I would ask to be adopted by an Olsen twin. I would slay a condor.

In conclusion, I love everything about the Olsen twins, but perhaps most of all, I love that they’ve become my litmus test to see how well a person understands high class aesthetics (I’ve often used an inverse litmus test for people who find Derek Jeter attractive). There is a marked difference between a person who finds the Olsen twins attractive and someone who does not. To quote an imbecile from my freshman floor in Pittsburgh, PA, “I mean, like, they’re hot, but they dress all retarded.” Similarly, when one of my best dressed coworkers from LA told me she loved the Olsen twins, I became even more obsessed with her (though of course based on her hyper-intelligence, distaste for the paleo diet, and masterful ability to pair a men’s white tee with dress shorts, I wasn’t surprised). There is a certain appeal to those who work around the clock while waving a giant middle finger to comfort and sensibility in the name of visual artistry**. I might never be a fraction as successful, but I’d like to start with baby steps to reclaim my NYC discernment. First, never assume you’re actually going to choose a post-work rock climb over a happy hour. Second, burn everything you own.

EDIT: One week after posting this, I stumbled upon the following glorious headline. You can’t make this shit up: Mary-Kate Olsen, 29, marries fiancé Olivier Sarkozy, 46, in intimate Manhattan ceremony decked with bowls and bowls of cigarettes

*Save for a few unfortunate tabloid appearances in the mid-aughts.

**In a similar case study, Victoria Beckham has always professed the merits of eking out every bit of potential and banking on hard-work over natural gifts (as exemplified by the title of one of her books, That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between). Naturally, I didn’t actually “read” her book (or most books), but I do know that she had to undergo foot surgery due to wearing too many towering heels. Guess who’s still not wearing flats?