Paul Thomas: Paint us beige - so what?

We're bland. We're boring. We are - the unkindest cut of all - beige.

So says comedian Billy Connolly. Now stand-up comedy has come a long way from blow-dried men in tuxedos telling mother-in-law jokes.

These days comedians aim to challenge our assumptions and shock us out of complacency, as well as make us laugh. To this end, they use the F word a lot, which was pretty confronting four or five decades ago and might still get a rise out of the odd octogenarian.

Sometimes they combine the F word with a statement calculated to offend a particular segment of society - for instance calling the Pope "a f***ing Nazi". This isn't quite as daring as it seems because you can be as rude as you like about Christianity without attracting a fatwa.

Presumably on the basis that Connolly was making a serious sociological observation as opposed to just shooting his mouth off, the Herald on Sunday devoted a page to the subject of our alleged beigeness.

The writer nailed her colours to the mast early on: "When some funny man you've always desperately admired tells you your very essence is an indiscriminate browny hue, it hurts. Especially when he's right."

To prove it, she cited responses to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise surveys. Indians think we should "lighten up", which is easy for them to say now that even their poverty is cool. Talk about turning a negative into a positive.

Koreans reckon we're "low-aspirational". Meanwhile, north of the demilitarised zone roughly a third of the Korean people aspire to nothing higher than not starving to death before Easter.

Then some local notables were wheeled out to look down on the beige brigade from the vantage point of their celebrity. "Loud, brash and outspoken" fashion person Denise L'Estrange Corbet predictably wants us to be "prouder and louder about everything we do".

I'm not sure the fashion industry is a sound platform from which to pontificate about our national identity. In essence, fashion is a fantasy concocted by gay men for vain women which the media, for commercial reasons, purports to take seriously.

Like all right-thinking people, I admire gays for their wit, style, flair in the kitchen and so on and so forth. However, I have one misgiving based on having lived for a decade in inner east Sydney which has the highest concentration of gays in the Southern Hemisphere: young urban gays are the most conformist sub-group there is.

It's like there's one look, one lifestyle and one mode of expression from which you deviate at your peril.

Next cab off the rank was Peta Mathias, foodie, author and proud owner of hair that glows in the dark. Mathias, who favours the Hare Krishna look, has an aversion to black.

She bemoans the fact that Kiwi women wear black because they don't want to be noticed, which is hard to square with the accompanying picture of the raucous L'Estrange Corbet wearing what appears to be an All Black jersey and multi-coloured knuckle dusters.

Just how far removed from the mainstream Mathias is becomes evident when she complains about our sporting representatives wearing black: "I mean, please. Make an effort." I mean, please: put a sock in it. Whatever colour you like, as long as it's thick.

The final witness for the prosecution is lawyer Rob Moodie who achieved his 15 minutes of fame via the simple expedient of going to work in pantyhose, pearls and a dress.

What these three have in common is that they seek to assert their individuality and "make a statement" through their highly distinctive personas. Fair enough: nothing wrong with a little flamboyance.

But let's recognise it for what it is: having an image might be useful for self-promotional purposes, but it's a cheap form of distinction. It is, in every sense, superficial.

As Mathias says, we have fantastic film-makers, sculptors, painters. Why stop there? In fact, we have fantastic people in many fields of endeavour, most of which don't have the questionable cachet of being creative but are nevertheless vital to a successful society. What makes these people fantastic is their achievements, not the way they look or what others say about them, and certainly not what they say about themselves.

The last, dissenting word was given to local comedian Te Radar. "I think we can be misinterpreted as being beige because we're polite," he said. "We have that reputation for not blowing our own trumpet which I think is a noble institution."

Indeed. New Zealand may be unfashionable but that only matters to people who care deeply about being in fashion. And fashion, by definition, is ephemeral.