While cruising the Wellington Green mall over the weekend with my best friend I spotted something that drove me nuts. Scattered about the mall were stores that blared techno music and were filled with giggling blank-eyed imbeciles who shucked out obscene amounts of cash for clothing.
One particular shop really agitated me – Abercrombie and Fitch. They offer the newest in fashions, tattered army fatigues. Yes, clothes for those who have neither served in the military nor have that patience to actually wear out an article of clothing.
The insanity of this whole store was that a pair of camouflage cutoffs and a white t-shirt with sunglasses and flip flops would run over one hundred dollars. My pal Rufus was wearing this exact outfit and according to him he only spent about 30 bucks.
The prices weren’t the only thing drawing my ire. The walls were covered with black and white photos of beautiful young people whose “naughty parts” were scantly covered by a lock of hair or a well placed musical instrument. Building upon this was a television that presented similar images in front of a suspiciously sticky couch.
What is the deal with being trendy? Do people wake up one day and say to the world “I’ve got so much money I think I’ll dress like I’m too poor to buy new clothes.” Here’s clue for you folks – go to a thrift store! You can get this same “I’m poor and need new clothes” look for a lot less and then you can give what you would have spent on trendy crap to a poor person so they can buy new clothes.
Now I don’t want you to think that I’m simply attacking the folks who want to look “preppy.” The “Alternative/Goth” crowd is just as guilty. These comically depressed members of the dark side spend their parents’ hard earned cash buying clothes that represent their inner darkness. This whole inner darkness thing must be the same across the board since I haven’t seen an original Goth since 1996. I find it ironic that the preps and the Goths have this whole culture clash going on when they are just trendy losers of a different color.
I can remember a time when if you wanted to walk around in black clothes with metal hooks and studs dangling off of them it required a trip to the Home Depot and a bit of talent. Now one can get the same look for $45.00 at Hot Topic. The sad thing is most of these happy-go-lucky children of the mall don’t realize that buying Goth gear from a store is an insult of what dressing like that is supposed to be. They wear clothes whose connotations they don’t understand, ask a heroine addict about the socks over the elbow look. I know that they want to be rebellious and look like you spend Sundays having brunch with Ozzy and Satan, but here’s a clue: to be an individual you might want to think about looking different than everyone else.
Trendiness is a disease that stems from a lack of an attention span. I can afford to be deeper here because the bottom 90% gave up 100 words ago.
