Is Minimalism Just Another Product Wealthy People Can Buy?

Despite the valid questions and thought-provoking ideas Fagan articulates, the unsubstantiated assumptions she makes about people’s intentions illuminate possible bias against certain people, ultimately weakening her argument. Evidence for bias is present in the assumptions she makes about why people practice minimalism. It is clear that Fagan believes that the main (if not only) reason people practice minimalism is to flaunt their wealth rather than for any internal reason. She writes “we are entitled to buy whatever we like, but to pretend that the intentional and costly upfront implications of a minimalist-chic life are anything, but privileged posturing is ridiculous.” The term “posturing,” meaning to “behave in a way that is intended to impress or mislead,” is particularly notable here because it shows that she believes that people use minimalism to craft a certain image of themselves. While it may be fair to criticize people for practicing minimalism in order to craft an image, Fagan does not provide any evidence for this being the main or only reason. She does not include any anecdotes from minimalists themselves, and instead just continues to share her own opinion and insist that minimalism is a “personal performance art,” “a performative reduction in consumption,” and a form of “conspicuous consumption.” Because this point is so central to Fagan’s writing, not providing sufficient evidence for it significantly detracts from her argument.

Fagan further misconceives minimalism neglecting how it can be practiced modestly. She says, “The only people who can ‘practice’ minimalism in any meaningful way are people upon whom it isn’t forced by financial or logistical circumstances...You cannot choose to ‘declutter’ if you are already living in a sparse home you cannot afford to furnish. You cannot “reduce” the food you consume if you are already only able to put one good meal on the table per day.” In other words, Fagan believes that only people who have time and money to spare can practice minimalism. This quote explicitly shows how Fagan believes lower brow people can’t practice minimalism and implicitly demonstrates a possible misconception of what minimalism is and is about. According to Break the Twitch, a blog written by a minimalist, minimalism is all about owning only “what adds value and meaning to your life.” It thus seems very possible that a lower-class person with few belongings could in fact practice minimalism even if it isn't a choice in contrast to what Fagan believes.

Instead of acknowledging this more modest form of minimalism, Fagan instead focuses a vast majority of her energy criticizing an ostentatious form of minimalism. Fagan seems to think there is something morally wrong with minimalism because she thinks it makes people feel justified in spending excessively (on a select few expensive items instead of a large lot). She largely focuses on a specific kind of ostentatious minimalism often citing unnecessary expensive items that she believes minimalists tend to buy like a “$4,000 dining table hand-whittled by a failed novelist in Scandinavia'' or “$250 worth of nigh-invisible Glossier products.” While it is fair for her to make the point that making these sorts of purchases are unnecessary and ironic considering minimalism is supposed to be about “paring down” and focused on reducing consumption, she neglects to acknowledge minimalists who are not making such purchases and practicing minimalism for other possible reasons. By only acknowledging an ostentatious form of minimalism, Fagan appears biased towards the upper class. By asserting that she thinks lower class people can’t practice minimalism, she strongly insinuates that only those that are well-off can. If ostentatious minimalism is the only kind of minimalism that Fagan acknowledges, and she only believes wealthy people can be minimalism it seems as though Fagan believes the wealthy are inherently ostentatious or even unable to be modest. However, she cannot know someone else’s true intentions. It is very well possible that some wealthy minimalists have adopted the practice in order to simplify and better their lives and there isn’t anything inherently morally wrong about trying to better oneself. Furthermore, people are often born into wealth, and they cannot change that; it is possible that they abandoned their more typical wealthy lifestyle because they truly would have preferred a minimal lifestyle no matter what class they were born into. Thus, it appears that Fagan has a general bias against the upper class.

Her strong bias is readily apparent in the constantly insulting tone she uses throughout the piece. One such example of insulting tone follows: she writes, “let’s be clear about what the minimalist aesthetic, at least as a personal style choice, actually is: it’s a way of aping the connotations of simplicity and even, to a degree, asceticism, without actually having to give up those sweet, sweet class signifiers.” Two things about this sentence read as particularly insulting. The first is the choice of the word “aping,” which according to the definition given by Google means to “imitate the behavior or manner of (someone or something), especially in an absurd or unthinking way.” While Fagan could have chosen to use a word with a similar meaning such as “copy,” “imitate,” or “mimic,” she instead chose the word ape which differs from the other words because of the last part of definition: “especially in an absurd or unthinking way.” It thus seems as though Fagan intentionally used this word as a slight. The word “ape” also relates to animals and therefore appears to be an attempt to insult by drawing comparisons between minimalists and animals. This word also appears in the essay a second time (“The visual cues and undercurrents of moral superiority it apes…”). Another aspect of this sentence that demonstrates an insulting tone is the repetition of the word “sweet” in “sweet, sweet class signifiers.” Fagan could have easily just used the word once, but instead she uses it twice which reads as sassy and insulting because she pokes fun at just how much those who practice minimalism must enjoy getting to demonstrate their upper-class status. 

The fact that she seemingly put a considerable amount of effort into slandering wealthy people who choose to practice minimalism further demonstrates her distaste for them while also calling into question her credibility. Especially considering that a large portion of her editorial piece is about her stance that those who practice minimalism believe themselves to be morally superior, but are in actuality the opposite, it proves ineffective to write so antagonistically. In order to seem credible talking about morality, it is important for one to seem moral themselves and Fagan’s insulting tone makes it seem like the piece was a rant rather than a persuasive argument about how to be more moral and sensitive to others. By using an insulting tone, her writing appears to be an attack against certain people, rather than their ideas. Therefore, her argument would have been more convincing if she had provided evidence from the perspective she spoke about (specifically wealthy people practicing minimalism) or provided a stronger concession for some other, possibly more admirable and genuine reasons one may choose to practice minimalism instead of making assumptions. 

The only time she stops to mention anything good about minimalism, she introduces it in the context that this is not how minimalism is practiced in reality. She says, “It’s about reducing for personal enlightenment and pompous blog posts, it’s not about arguing for a more equitable society in which people consume proportionate to their needs.” In other words, she says minimalism is about self-discovery and showing off and not ethical consumption. She thus doesn't allow the reader to draw their own conclusion whatsoever instead immediately introducing equitable consumption as something minimalism is inherently not. The lack of humility strongly downgrades her argument as it seems as though she recognizes that people can practice minimalism for good reasons but has no real way of addressing this counterclaim without it undermining her whole argument. If an argument can be torn down by a counterclaim that the author can't address, then it is worth questioning how strong the argument is in the first place. Furthermore, examining her own biases about wealthy people before writing may have prevented her from making guesses about people’s true intentions in the first place.