THE NEW FETISHISTS
Henry Porter on the
mania for gadgetry and body equipment
THE JEEP, a big square Mercedes, drove down the shingle beach and turned round to reverse its trailer into the Solent. On the trailer were two jet skis — double-seaters painted in different liveries; one white, turquoise and navy blue; the other yellow, red and white. Four people got out of the car — two couples in their thirties — and began preparing the jet skis for launch. And, oh, what preparation it was!
The two men slipped into a practised figure of activity. They unbuckled straps, checked gauges, filled fuel tanks, tapped and prodded and knocked and jiggled bits of their machines, urging the engines into throaty splutters. It was all done with the earnest speed of a Formula One pit-stop team or a flight-deck crew of an aircraft carrier. This was serious business; man and machine were about to elide in a perilous celerity. Everything had to be checked and double checked and checked again. The girls were putting on their wetsuits, matching their partners who had already changed. These suits were memorable. One couple wore a grey outfit with flashes of lime and mauve — the colour of blackcurrant mousse. The other wore grey, yellow and red.
They had life jackets, too, which they strapped up and buckled, occasionally patting the little gas cylinder that inflates the jacket in emergency. One girl wore an oversized waterproof watch, the other carried a yellow waterproof camera. She walked to the front of the jeep and bobbed up and down by the wing mirror to check her appearance.
Then they were all set. The jet skis were launched. The men revved the engines, the girls climbed on board and the two machines moved off in formation, their passengers looking very serious. They sped up and down the shoreline, made circles with the wash, and in no time at all had returned to the beach to fiddle with their equipment.
Anyone who has used a jet ski will testify that it's dull as hell, and predictably these people had got bored. What they took their pleasure from was the equipment, the gear, the kit, the specialised sporty- coloured trappings that joined them to the bright noisy machines.
There is a lot of this equipment fetishism about. Take the New Cyclist and his sturdily-built mountain bike, with its thick tyres and its no-nonsense horizontal handlebars. Is this bike much better than the drop handlebars and light-as-feather frame of the racing bike? Probably not, although the New Cyclist will not hear a word against the mountain bike, whose name somehow suggests a gruelling traversal of the Snowdonia National Park.
The other day I found a New Cyclist wheeling his mountain bike along the pavement in London and this is what he was wearing: light, perforated trainers, lurex cycling shorts which came down to just above the knee, a racing vest, chamois leather gloves, a watch that told him the time in Tokyo, a face mask to protect him from carbon monoxide fumes, a crash helmet and a pair of sunglasses which stretched round to his ears and looked more like a visor. All this to ride a push-bike in London.
Cycling has been transformed from a perfectly ordinary form of transport into a rather glamorous activity which now with its protective accessories implies a level of danger and manliness that is very difficult to take seriously. The same happened to sailing about 20 years ago when a young man playing about on a Midlands canal attached a small mast and sail to a surf- board by means of a universal joint and invented the windsurfer. He cannot have imagined the sort of garish kit that would follow in his wake, the sleek wetsuits, the extra-grip rubber boots, straps and buck- les, harnesses and in some cases rubber balaclavas which are designed to help the air flow past the dashing mariner. The windsurfer in all his trappings looks like some sort of bound-up pervert. Windsur- fers do it tied up.
Where did all this come from? Jean- Claude Killy has much to answer for. After his success in the 1968 Winter Olympics, the downhill skiing champion toured the world endorsing all sorts of products, but particularly gloves, boots, skis, ski suits, headbands. The gear of the slopes became de rigueur and has developed into an enormous industry which does not actually help people to ski better but may afford them more protection.
Then came the more extravagant winter sports that only a few lunatics would consider: they surfboarded down slopes of more than 45 degrees, jumped from planes to ride the ice-crystal sea above the alps, ski-dived from mountain tops, leapt from helicopters to take on the groaning sum- mer glaciers. And the equipment that came with these new dangerous sports! How they loved the buckles and straps and suits and goggles and the fluorescent face-paint that is worn in stripes along the nose, around the mouth and beneath the eyes and protects them against wind and sun.
The New Cyclist is just as serious about his equipment as the high mountain snow- surfer or the hang-glider — another com- mon gear fetishist. It is entirely acceptable now to pedal along the Gray's Inn Road looking like a warrior from a sci-fi comic strip, ostentatiously protected from unim- aginable dangers and, incidentally, from recognition.
To a degree, this is about fashion. Since the 19th century sporting clothes have been absorbed into everyday wardrobe: tail coats, sports jacket, golfing trousers, shooting tweeds, anoraks, track-suits and now shell-suits all have their origins in various sports. They lend the wearer an athletic and outdoor look when he is in town.
But equipment fetishism is more than the desire to look sporty. It thrives where people imagine themselves, or may even be actually engaged in, taking on the elements — the wind, the mountains, the sea. The kit expresses the danger to which these hardy souls expose themselves and it also carries an extravagant trust that is the mark of all fetishism. These straps and buckles and suits and clips and goggles are revered for their satisfying snap action, their purpose-designed ability to aid and protect the user. The hill tribes of Borneo would understand all about the New Cyc- list in the Gray's Inn Road and his totemic equipment.
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