Batmobile: invisibility for the masses

Something interesting has been going on in the world of car colours. I’ve noticed several cars in the last few weeks with matte black paint jobs. The kind of black that disappears in the dark. Light doesn’t reflect off it. Nothing shines. It looks a bit fuzzy; soft, even. It’s a bit like chalk-board black.

This matte look has extreme militaristic connotations. Its indefinability is like that of a warship’s grey, or a stealth bomber’s black. The relationship between auto design and jets is nothing new, with many car designs throughout the last 60 years directly referencing the aerodynamic, flight-specific shapes of air and space-travel. 

I’m not exactly well-versed in the world of auto trends, but this matte black seems like quite a departure from car paint trends of recent years. It’s not just a colour change, it’s a textural, material change. Cars have typically been on a mission to look more aerodynamic, more sleek. Every curve designed to reflect light in a way to look like it’s “in motion”. But here, now, is a car that has rock-like qualities. Designed to both absorb and blend into its urban surroundings (specifically urban because I’ve only seen this on a handful of BMWs, one sport utility BMW and a 3 Series sedan, and a GT sedan), less a beacon of motion, more so a moment of dissolve, blur and invisibility. 

This is probably a dramatic next stage manifestation of the trend for grey cars… utilizing texture and what are likely new paint technologies to achieve a visual quality desired but unattained by conventional grey. Grey signaled invisibility in an urban environment. It was subtle. It was austere. 

Matte black makes cars almost invisible. Invisibility is a shield, both physically and emotionally - in this case, more emotionally. Signaling an implicit need for emotional security over physical security. Though counter-intuitively, this matte black is much harder to see in traffic. Are cars so safe now they don’t need to look safe? Is emotional safety derived from not-being-seen more important than the physical safety of being-seen?

It also signals an extreme masculine subjectivity in the form of optic control. The driver of the matte black vehicle is in a position of visual power compared to his surrounding (non-matte driving) people. He can see, but isn’t seen. 

Oddly, this isn’t just a trend in cars. It’s also cropping up in bicycle paint jobs too. Somehow, the stillness, silence and fuzz of matte has replaced the false motion of shiny paint. It’s more masculine, harder-looking, safer-feeling, and exactly the opposite of almost everything else on the road. 

Update: I wonder how much this has to do with comic book illustration style? 

Brave girls

After last week’s revelations about the Japanese man who donned a wetsuit in the middle of the tsunami’s destruction to swim out and rescue is wife and mother, I’ve been thinking a lot about bravery. 

Bravery is experienced almost universally across cultures. In most, it’s a highly gendered characteristic, celebrated chiefly as a sign of masculinity. It’s an outward show of virility and potential success. Most cultures distinguish between risk-taking and bravery although often reward them in the same way when done successfully. 

Though this post isn’t about bravery in general, it’s an observation that unlike in the US - where bravery is embraced and rewarded in the same way for men and women alike, in the UK, bravery is a strictly male thing. Women and girls are actively discouraged (it seems) from being brave. This bothers me. 

Two weeks ago, I spent my Sunday with a wonderful new friend, 6 year-old Maddy, and her brother and father, standing by the side of a road handing out water bottles to bike racers in the Wally Gimber. Having 3 brothers and awesome parents, I’m pretty sure Maddy is going to grow up to be an amazing girl, full of gumption and gall, maybe become a bike racer like her dad, or a successful attorney or writer or astronaut. Mostly because it’s quite difficult to impart wisdom to boys about being brave (as is their cultural rite as boys in England) without some of it rubbing off on her. 

Encouraging bravery is necessary if you’re trying to promote self-confidence because it’s all about believing in yourself, regardless the outcome. 

I don’t have too many gripes about English culture, mostly just amused observations about its quirks. But the English discouragement of female bravery is fundamentally horrible. It turns us into a culture of co-dependent, self-depricating, shy and (sadly) often un-interesting individuals who would rather be glamour models than business women. (I pray this isn’t the fate of little Maddy).

Female bravery is looked down upon because it means standing out from the crowd. (Humiliation is fine if it happens en masse, but unbearable if it happens to you all alone). English women like to make mistakes in large groups (note the monstrous occasion that is the English “hen-do”), and they don’t mind looking the fool, but looking the fool in the promotion of one’s personal or professional success means looking ambitious (and there is little less English than appearing to try hard). Bravery requires enthusiasm and caring. The English might be good-humoured, but (see my previous point), enthusiasm and keen-ness is hard to swallow for a culture that invented “cool” (not caring). 

That being said, I know a few amazing, keen, very brave English women. I raced with and against some of them yesterday. 

England needs brave girls. It needs to promote a culture of bravery, regardless of gender. Bravery breeds intelligence, self-confidence, independence and ambition. Where are our role models who can displace the glamour models? I’ll puke if I see another female olympic athlete pose nude for some boy mag. Don’t turn our bravery into just another way of producing a beautiful body. Acts of bravery can be small. They can mean letting us make mistakes. Let us learn how to fail, for failure (as most the big British business minds will tell you) is the the currency of success. Let us not be perfect, for perfection sows the seeds of doubt. Let us race against the boys. Let us do things alone. Let us not compromise ourselves or what we believe in. Let us not be afraid our bravery will signal some sort of un-femininity. 

In our marketing, can we learn to celebrate our desire to be brave? English girls are in shackles, wanting to be brave, but up against a culture which doesn’t let them. Which brand is going to realise this first?