It has been a hard week, even for the thick-skinned.
The news that Jensen Huang, a co-founder of Nvidia, admitted to an affair with a woman whom U.S. intelligence regards as a Chinese spy, has shaken not only Silicon Valley and geopolitics. It also has been an earthquake for the leather-jacket-wearing community.
We ask ourselves: Was Mr. Huang an easy mark because of his love of high-fashion, motorcycle-adjacent jackets that say both “I don’t care what people think!” and “Do you like how I look?” Did our — I mean, his — armor make him a target? Is an expensive leather jacket on a middle-aged man the new symbol of a honeypot victim?
Without any authorization whatsoever, because that would go against our rebellious grain, I’m speaking out on behalf of the leather-jacket community. We are washed-up musicians and we are dads just trying to feel something again and we are people who want others to assume that we own a Ducati Panigale. And we are here to defend the leather jacket’s name and honor.
We declare: One man’s fleshly failures should not impugn our second skins. They say not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Well, similarly, don’t throw out the baby lambskin with the horny human body beneath.
For many of us, this crisis began long before my fellow graying middle-aged man fell for the oldest trick in the spy book. It began when Mr. Huang had the chutzpah to appropriate our big thing as his big thing. A tech tycoon in his soon-to-be-signature Tom Ford leather jacket was just what we were hoping the rest of the world didn’t see when it looked at us.
Even then, were we aware that we had a problem? Sure. We may have undiagnosed issues with vulnerability (as reflected in our need for a supplemental dermis), but we’re not stupid. Did we acquire multiple jackets that our spouses smeared as “identical to the last one”? Yes. But a lot of our spouses don’t know the difference between a 1.5-ounce leather and a three-ounce leather, which is like not knowing the difference between Texas and cheese. This was our thing, OK?
Then Mr. Huang, with his own penchant for black leather jackets, had to go and become a household name, the pillar of artificial intelligence, and the man, we were told, without whom the future itself might vanish and the world regress to however it got things done in 2022.
It was annoying to watch a billionaire cosplaying as a rebel, perhaps in order to mask his extraordinary power. Here he was boasting in interviews of not even knowing where his jackets came from, saying his wife and daughter bought them for him, when we in the community could tell you what we ate for dinner any of those fateful days when a new jacket came into our lives. Leather jackets are for people with chips on their shoulders, not microchips in their palms.
People did begin to ask me, a longtime aficionado, if I was emulating Mr. Huang. How dare they! Is it not enough for Mr. Huang to facilitate taking away all the jobs? He wants all the animal skins, too! We in the community began to long for the days when a group of people in leather jackets was called a posse. Now it is known as an A.I. panel.
At the same time, I identified with some of his comments about the leather lifestyle. These jackets are indeed a great uniform for people who don’t want to think about what to wear every day. They curb the problem of choice even if they signal that you are a problem. And when you belong to a minority group in America, having a signature look is a great way not to be confused with Vivek Ramaswamy.
Then the espionage scandal erupted, and our community of middle-aged leathermen was forced into a reckoning. Are we not as tough as we look? Does the world see us in our skins and think: That guy is one flirty, age-gapped compliment about his panel performance away from potentially divulging secrets?
The Chinese did not, as far as we know, pursue Mark Zuckerberg, with his T-shirts that look as if they were acquired at the estate sale of someone for whom Ozempic worked a little too well. They did not go after Sam Altman’s hoodies. If there was a target on Mr. Huang’s back, it was made from a buttery, buttery leather.
Those of us in the midlife leather-clad community must face what T.S. Eliot called an “overwhelming question”: Do we accessory pivot? Cede the leather jacket to a delusional man trying desperately to look young? Or do we insist that we were that man long before him?
Anand Giridharadas is the author of “Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City” and the publisher of the newsletter The Ink.
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