So Here's the Deal with Floggers

The Tedster recently sent me a NYT article about floggers. After writing my very long email response, I figured I should share with the world the TRUE significance of floggers and Cumbio.


Basically, the article makes floggers out to be something WAY more stylish than it really is. We Americans have a Cumbio too - her name is Tila Tequila. She was a former stripper who started posting original rap on MySpace. Somehow (and this I still haven't figured out) her website garnered more hits than any other profile. Along the way, she became a Playboy model, fashion designer and an MTV reality TV star (A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila). The term "MySpace whore" - someone who is practically addicted to posting pictures of themselves on MySpace - is basically a flogger.

Flogger, however, is a little different in that floggers self-identify as such. They have "flogger parties," as the article mentioned, where they dress up and take pictures of each other. No one calls themself a MySpace whore. People do, however, call themselves flogger.

Floggers also have distinct clothing. The article says they dress up brightly, but that's an understatement. They wear very tight skinny jeans in bright red, yellow, orange or green. Do you know Kanye West's glasses, white with lines through the middle? They wear those to those boliches, sometimes white or sometimes in other colors. And they're not copying Kanye. They also wear their hair long and to the side, over the eyes, and it's very often dyed. Any sort of standout accessory - neon shoe laces, hairclips, etc - are all part of the flogger wardrobe. While Cumbio likes cumbia, most floggers prefer electronica, techno and other mainstream clubbing music. What Cumbio said about the androgenity (sp?) of the floggers is definitely true, but floggers are not putos (gays).

Having said all that, the article is very wrong to give the impression that floggers are about empowering youth, giving them a voice like "Hollywood celebrities" or anything like that. The vast majority of teenagers despise the flogger movement. There is only one official flogger in San Vicente. Of course, everyone else has a fotolog and the flogger fashion influences mainstream fashion as well (my friends very often go out in brightly colored clothing that would look absurd in the US), but to identify as a flogger is generally an embarrassment. Someone once told me that he doesn't like the floggers because they just follow what all the other floggers do, that they lack individuality. Most of my friends scoff at the floggers they see at the boliche. If they are wearing flogger-like clothes, others will often accuse them of being the F-word, to which they will hastily shake their head and respond "NO! No soy flogger!" Cumbio's book is a joke - there is a very popular Facebook group called "Yo no puedo creer que Cumbio haya publicado un libro" ("I can't believe that Cumbio has published a book"). "Todos Contra Cumbio," All Against Cumbio, has over 13000 members.

As much as Cumbio and the floggers are disliked in the Argentinean mainstream, it's hard to understate their influence. The colorful shirts, the tight pants, the piercings - it is all now part of Argentinean style. Perhaps floggers should even take credit for Cristina's pink suits.

I hope this adds a new perspective to the Times' article!

Paz y Amor,
La Pirata