The world’s most fashionable people…in overalls

So, I’m a big fan of The Sartorialist.  I love to look at the pictures and get ideas and think of all the clothing and accessories that I want to buy and won’t because I am poor.  (I am both frustrated by and kind of proud of the fact that aside from a sale where I got six pairs of tights for 18€ last month, I have not purchased a single article of clothing or any accessories for myself since moving back to Spain in September.  Frustrated because naturally if I had more money I would and I’m seriously getting really tired of my current wardrobe; proud because the small amount of money I can spend on leisure goes toward things that most clear-headed people would consider more valuable than personal decoration…  But seriously I’m so sick of my clothes.)  

(T.S. Image links to The Sartorialist video page)

ANYway, I was poking around on the video page and on the first one of the two videos discovered a vomit-inducing woman, a fashion photographer, whose conceited tone, vintage-Madonna-ish inconsistent accent, dreadful posture* and unwarranted — given her outfit — pride in her fashion sense, make me want to laugh at her but also maybe punch her in the face.  I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “tool” when describing a woman, but I’m going to say that she’s a tool.  Wait for her, she’s toward the end.  The one with the stupid sunglasses.

In the other video available, the last girl also has a smugness about her, particularly annoying when you watch how she’s trying to poof out her lips and making poorly executed modeling faces.

These girls are asked about the best fashion advice they’ve ever gotten, and toot it as if it justifies some of the gross things in which they’ve decided to drape themselves.  The best fashion advice I’ve ever gotten is advice that I gave myself, and tell myself from time to time: Fashion is just as much about change as anything else; high fashion can be terribly ugly, trends unflattering, and looks can definitely — and frequently — be terribly ugly and unflattering on you.  Any look — trendy, preppy, goth, hippie, boho, somewhere in between or undefinable — can be done well or horribly.

* The posture thing: I’ve concluded that in a decade or two we may face an entire generation of slumped, stooped, riddled-with-back-pain adults.  I swear almost every person I see under the age of 21 (and several over) affects this slumped posture, and consistently.  Horrendous posture is not new for emo kids or goth kids or other I’m-such-a-non-conformist kids, but it’s getting out of control.  It actually appears to be trendy.  WHYYYY???

You weren’t popular.

(Image links to Mean Girls Wikipedia page)

I am fascinated by social hierarchies and social inequality, popularity struggles and the ecosystems of adolescence.  I’m also interested in the concept of popularity, which is important for the rest of this post.  ”Popular” kids in middle school in high school are widely revered for whatever reasons, but aren’t necessarily popular by definition because often times they are widely disliked outside of (or even inside of) their own cliques.  And some cliques will reject what the majority views as popular and go by their own mini-hierarchy with their own popularity contests.  Likewise, there are lots of kids who are genuinely popular in middle school and high school, in that everyone likes them, but are not considered part of the popular crowd.  When I use the term in this post, I’m generally referring to the former concept.

I mentioned in a recent post, Individualism, bad books, and conflict resolution, that Spain, or at least Madrid, seems to have a different, more relaxed system of social hierarchies in grade school and university environments.  Groups of 17-year-olds who appear to have drastically different senses of fashion, music, and pop culture preferences are frequent here, groups that are much harder to find in the United States, at least in the under-25 demographic.  Of course the fact that groups are more mixed here is not a bad thing — for youth, fashion senses are often fleeting, tastes in music fickle, and the moment’s popular trends are just that.  Later in life you (hopefully) realize that, while occasionally those things can be indicators of deeper personality traits or compatibility, there are better ways to choose your friends.

Earlier this year with my class we watched the movie Camp Rock, starring the Jonas Brothers and a bunch of other Disney hopefuls.  The plot is classic for the pre-teen genre: girl (brunette, naturally) is awesome but not popular; popular girl (blonde, naturally) is actually really insecure and has a crappier life than the unpopular girl; there’s some lying and some scheming, both parties get humiliated, they fight over a boy; unpopular girl becomes popular for being who she really is and gets boy, who, it turns out, never cared if she was popular or not because he’s actually really deep; popular girl gets back down to earth and everyone becomes friends.

During scenes in which there was a lot of cattiness and scheming on the popular girl’s part, and those where adolescent girls were going to such great lengths to break free from their social status and join a different one, my teacher was saying that it all seemed so unrealistic.  I told her that movies like this were always overdramatic, but that social hierarchies in U.S. grade schools can be very rigid and can cause kids a lot of problems.  It was something she had a hard time wrapping her mind around because it was a foreign concept to her.

In movies and TV shows that deal with cliques and popularity and the horrors of grades 6 through 12, there is often a level of cruelty that for all my high school’s cliques, popularity fights, and cutthroat girls striving to be on top, I was fortunate never to witness.  I’m referring to things like popular or athletic guys beating up geeky boys just because they’re geeky; popular kids asking an unpopular kids to a dance as a joke; physically threatening and taunting mentally challenged students.  That isn’t to say, though, that other schools in the U.S. don’t experience that sort of cruelty, nor that other types of cruelty didn’t exist in mine.  Social struggles in high school and middle school are exhausting, stressful, and sometimes harmful.  It’s rare that a kid doesn’t agonize at least a little over some sort of social issue, but there are a few here and there and I was always jealous of them.

25 Things: A Defense by Hayley Roberts

My brilliant best friend Hayley Roberts, who runs a blog called Hayley’s Comment, has posted a response to Time writer Claire Suddath’s weak and undeservedly self-satisfied article complaining about the “25 Things” lists that have gone viral on Facebook the last couple of weeks.  Here’s a snippet:

Suddath’s missive–which, quality wise, is about as worthy of Time as my third grade report on hair–concludes with a list of 25 Things she wishes she didn’t know about people. Why she felt the need to publicly embarrass people that she claims to be “friends” with by posting their facts under the labels of stupid and narcissistic (instead of just not reading the notes that cause her unending grief) is an issue for her psychologist.

I eventually did my own list and posted it on Facebook after reading several others by not only my good friends, but by people I was friends with on Facebook but had never been that close with, or people with whom I’d fallen out of touch.  The result was that I remembered how great some of these people were, I discovered things I had in common with mere acquaintances, and I wanted to know some of them better and get back in touch with others.  Some people have trouble remembering or realizing that not everyone is like them; I’m the opposite.  I have a hard time remembering that I DO have things in common with other people, and things like this help remind me of that.  

And for the record, once you read Suddath’s list of things that apparently irritate her so much, she’ll seem even lamer.  Whoever you are, #15, I would LOVE it if I found out that one of my friends liked to tape their thumbs to their hands to see what it was like to be a dinosaur.  I WOULD LOVE IT.  AND YOU.

Anyway, read Hayley’s full article here.

UPDATE: Suddath has posted a new article where she first appears to repent, referencing how incredible the deluge of angry emails she’s gotten defending the lists and how interesting they can be, although from the start she still has the tone of a young adult who’s a little high on the maturity she believes she has.  I’d give her credit for taking a second look, but I’m not going to, because by the end it appears as though all she wanted to do was list ANOTHER 25 things (which I still found great) her friends did that she finds stupid.  Snore.