Ryan North Knows All About Overextended Metaphors

Relationships as Clothing

We are constantly overextending, misusing, abusing, stretching, protracting, and overcomplicating metaphors. This is not a problem gift which we uniquely possess; our culture is full of overextended metaphors--sometimes illuminating, sometimes troubling, sometimes cringe-inducingly gross: knowledge as light, technology as magic, humans as computers, sex as driving, people as modes of transportation (e.g. women as cars).

Here we will explore all manner of overextended metaphors, as they appear in our culture, but more prominently as well as we create them through our own insanity brilliance for the glory of the insights produced by these comparisons!

Examine this not atypical conversation:

R: So, people are like clothes!

L: You mean relationships are like clothes?

R: Yes! In that you change them every day?

L: Or in that sometimes you buy them cheap from Forever 21 because they look cute at the time but you know they'll fall apart in three months?

R: Yes! And because they're...skimpy? Or that they're sometimes . . . made in sweatshops?

L: Why did this begin?

R: Because people say they don't fit into clothes when they should be saying that the clothes don't fit them! LIKE RELATIONSHIPS.


How else are relationships like clothes?