We Are the Goon Squad and We're Coming to Town

Back when I was teaching middle school, one of the things that you couldn't help but notice about the students in my classes and around the halls was the relative frequency of scene-jumping that happened year to year. Sometimes it didn't even take that long -- if a girl into hip-hop started dating some skater/goth boy the general color scheme of her outfits could change within the course of a few days. But more often than not what you saw was a kid come into the school looking like his mother dressed him, only to see his hair grow and his shoes become more and more untied as he navigated his way through towards the 8th grade.

Of course a lot of people would argue that's what those developmental years are really for -- discovering your own boundaries, trying out different things to see how well they do or don't fit your personality.

It's a process that's been around forever, and certainly isn't going to go away anytime soon.

The thing that made this different to see from a teacher's perspective was that even as the kids that you knew and worked with went through the changes, you could still manage to see parts of their core personality shine through whatever sort of outer shell they may have taken on. You could see kids that were even at that young age somehow able to rise above the trappings of the clothes they were wearing or music they were listening to, and which ones were still at a point where they were more likely to be steered by what they thought they should be in order to project the particular sense of authenticity they felt the scene they had linked to required.

Not that those kids were lost hopes or anything -- but more that when someone links their lifestyle with their outward appearance (as teenagers sometimes do) there's a risk of shutting yourself off to new discoveries. Even worse, they are susceptible to what appears to be a sort of cultural segregation that comes as a byproduct of the clique culture movement that's so prevalent in marketing campaigns aimed at this specific age group these days.

I suppose you can understand where the business marketers are coming from when they create niche markets -- after all there's a simple logic to creating a store for kids who to listen goth music where they can purchace goth clothing, goth-themed toys, accessories or whatever -- but once you create that sort of encapsulated culture -- you also court the idea of a captive audience that maybe doesn't have an interest in appreciating other things. Sure kids can take it upon themselves to say "I prefer this style of music, but I also want to check out other things too," -- but sometimes it seems the way that things are so specifically categorized these days (Fuse vs. BET, for example) it's almost more of a cultural challenge than a question of preferred tastes.

In other words (as much as us old fogies might disagree) these days it's almost as if you're not a "real goth" unless you buy your fingerless lace glove thingees from Hot Topic, your little black hoop earrings at Spenser's, and so forth. And it's not like we can really sit here and point the finger at these kids for being like so many sheep -- because the same crap happened when we were in school. The names of the stores might have been different, but the theory is always the same.

I think what separates a lot of us from this sort of thinking is a point we hit somewhere along the line after we'd seen a little bit more of life where we kinda say to ourselves, "You know it was fun for a while, but all this stuff isn't really who I am -- it's just clothes I like to wear."

The realization comes at different points and in different degrees for everyone, but I clearly remember a big moment in this vein came for me when I was working backstage crew one night in St. Augustine and getting accosted by some metal-head band member I was working for at the time when he discovered I was listening to a rap album.

The moment was unique because it wasn't my parents or teachers saying my music was just noise and screaming. This was someone I supposedly shared a connected style with telling me that I somehow wasn't allowed to like one form of music because of my stated connection to another. It wasn't the end of an era for me, but a light bulb certainly went on at that moment where I was like,

"Wow, that's kind of a stupid rule."

I think it's easier when you're emotionally young to ideologically belong to something without question. Not so much that you sign some contract and start lock-step marching and reporting your parents anti-Reich activities (although the theory is probably similar) -- but more like someone doing their own part to gain what they feel is authenticity within a connection to a larger group -- which in turn would indicate some level of being authentic to yourself (or at least that part of yourself that identifies with a certain musical style, trend, or whatever).

And yeah, there's clearly a nod to herd mentality that can easily be associated with that type of thinking -- but there are ages where I think people want to leave the sheltered shadow of their family influence, but don't have the relative confidence or experience yet to be able to survive without having a 'different' sort of family to belong to.

Obviously this sort of thing can have dangerous side effects, but I think it's short sighted to blame the scenes themselves. Not every kid who hitches his wagon to Thug culture ends up a criminal, nor does every nerdy school kid end up tied to their lack of social graces either.

Perhaps that's why despite seeing so much jumping of someone else's train while I was a teacher I still come away with a lot of optimism about kids in general.

Unfortunately I can't always say the same for adults.

I think sometimes it's not always our fault -- because even as grown-ups there are still a lot of people out there who still emotionally need some sort of cultural umbrella to feel safe under (perhaps because in some sense they still haven't reached that personal point where having some sort of connection or association to a group hasn't yet become separated from simply sharing interests with that group, if that makes sense).

So even as adults of all ages continue to complain ad-nauseum about the lack of integrity in youth culture (which is particularly annoying when you hear it from Baby Boomers, although I'm still not quite sure why), you still see dudes driving around in cars that have license plates that say "Parrothead 4 Life," or whatever variant of the Jesus fish sticker/emblem that happens to fit their personal ideologies at the moment.

I can't tell you how many times when I was teaching where we would have parent/teacher conferences to discuss and try to deal with the flagging educational performance of some peroxide-blond hair with the one bang hanging his eyes skater kids, where the mom wearing the Katie Couric blazer tagged with fifteen 'this colored ribbon pin shows my support for [insert Oprah-championed cause here]' who would always be on the edge of tears saying,

"He used to be such a good boy, but now all he wants to do is whatever those empty-headed
friends of his tell him they saw on the latest episode of Viva La Bam - I don't know where
he got the idea that being such a follower was the way to live."

So you kinda have to ask yourself -- what's really the difference between the kid in the Slipknot t-shirt with the dyed black hair and eyebrow piercings and the parent who can't connect to him emotionally who wears the same Oakley sunglasses Dale Earnhardt Jr. wears and has a number "3" decal on the back windshield of his Chevrolet?

To me it comes down to accountability. No matter how plastic or temporary a given trend's half-life might be, if you ask a teenager where they got their look from, they'll tell you the band, the album label, which coast said record company is representin' for, and who they're gonna be hotter than when they blow up.

But go to a group of adults and say, "Which current trendsetters do you feel you're the most influenced by?" and my feeling is that 90% of them will say something to the effect of,

"Who has time for all of that nonsense? I do what I like to do. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get home -- Idol's on."

No matter how young or how old -- you still see guys who like to play golf who always have to wear some shit on their clothing that somehow tells you (whether you wanted to know or not) just how much they love golf. You still see the same plain white backwards ballcap, pink popped-collar polo shirt, lucky brand jeans, and flip-flop shoes on guys who show up at the sports bars in groups of 50 at a time,

And you still see tons of chicks wearing those enormous-looking designer sunglasses.

Which is something I simply do not get at all.

I mean, OK -- I understand people have a desire to staying in touch with the latest fashions from New York, Paris, Milan, or whatever. I can even find some sense in the idea that if you are seen wearing something close to what was coming down the runways in Bryant Park (or perhaps more specifically the styles being worn by the jet-setters who get front row seats at those sorts of things) that you're showing the world that you not only have the fashion sense to know what the latest thing is, but you also possess the ability and money to go buy and wear it during the relative 15 minutes it takes for it to go from "hot" to "fug" -- Somehow implying to the rest of the unwashed masses that the only thing really keeping you from being a jet-setter is the lack of a jet.

But we're not talking about a specific cut of jeans, a modern print, radically redefined blouse design, or the latest style of over-the-shoulder handbag here. We're talking about sunglasses -- something that goes on your face, and when you start putting on these Yoko Ono looking things that wrap halfway around your head like a facehugger alien, a whole bunch of you look really fucking stupid.

Get something straight here -- if you're gonna embrace fashion icons who promote the idea that the more sunken in your cheeks look the thinner you appear to be -- you might want to consider what will happen if you start strapping five feet of thick dark plastic on top of there.

Sure on some women it looks OK, but that's only because the shape of their face and the length and width of their nose is complimented when the area around the eyes is obscured a bit by the shape of the glasses themselves.

I don't know, maybe it's a personal thing. To me one of the sexiest things about women are their eyes -- especially the way their shape combines with the relative fullness of the lips. In fact I think it plays out a lot throughout history where a lot of women who have been celebrated for their beauty feature either a combination of wider set eyes and fuller lips or a narrower base to the eyes and smaller lips to match.

It's one of those things that helps create a frame around a person's face -- and it's one of those subliminal things scientists are always pointing out about human preferences in body features. I'm not saying people who don't have these combinations can't be beautiful, but in a society such as ours where outward features are so objectified that it seems like the same type of people become famous over and over when judged on those terms.

Of course, not all of us are born this way -- and that's where things like sunglasses can help out. People with closer eyes sometimes wear wider sunglasses to project the idea of width to their faces, while people who's eyes are wider apart favor slimmer glasses to minimize that image.

At the same time there's nothing easier to spot than someone who looks goofy in their shades (something I know all too well from personal experience).

Or to put it another way -- ever notice how John Lennon always favored those little wire-rim glasses? Sure they were a style in England at the time, but it's become a part of Lennon's lasting iconic images largely because it really really worked for him. Take a look at any pictures of the guy without glasses on and you'll quickly notice that his eyes were spread wide apart, almost to opposite sides of his face -- dude was like a fish!

Of course we all know the names that are driving this recent move back towards the big frames and whatnot -- but I for one contend that these sort of looks don't really work on these chicks either (save for perhaps the Lohan -- who's beady little eyes tend to undercut the effectiveness of whatever surgeons have been doing to the rest of her for the past couple of years) -- and were probably first assimilated into their clothing styles to help hide raccoon-like circles around the eyes that people tend to get when they do boatloads of heroin for weeks at a time.

But more than that -- you've got to choose things that work for you and stop trying to accent your look as if you were someone else.

For example, Paris Hilton has a tiny head. It's one of the reasons she gets away with being so sickeningly skinny where some of her other big-headed friends have to deal with accusations (whether grounded or not) about eating disorders. Everyone's favorite heiress icon almost needs to be dead skinny, because few things in this world are more fug than having a fat body and neck taper up to a tiny face. Researchers continue to say that humans tend to favor symmetry in the bodies of other humans, which means should Paris pack on a few pounds anytime soon and start to look like the top of a ball point pen, people might not pay quite as much attention to her as they used to.

Which is why even when she wears oversized glasses they tend to have skinny frames and big lenses. If she tried to wear some of those big ol' Jackie-O style frames that are starting to come into mode these days, they'd look like a hat.

Going with a style like that makes about as much sense as me wearing a shirt that shows off my midriff.

The thing is -- Paris knows this. She pays lots of fawning sycophants to tell her these things so when she gets dressed in the mornings she doesn't look stupid. It's not her stylist's fault that the girl herself is about as sharp as a bag of hammers, but at least when she does retarded shit in public you know it's her -- because she's created a signature look around herself that nowadays is almost more appreciated than her personality -- which I suspect is exactly what she (or her various handlers) want.

You, on the other hand sitting there sipping your vodka-cranberry-Red Bull-Zima-on-the-beach through the little mixing straw the bartender gave you -- do not have the benefit of an army of experts -- which means when you strap those $300 Bulgari tank-commander-goggle looking things to your head and slurp your drink that way all people see is something akin to the head of a fly sniffing the garbage with your tiny tube of a mouth.

I swear it's like some of these women don't even look in the mirror when they put these things on -- have you seen yourselves lately? I mean, I'm no fashion plate myself, but how does this work exactly?

Do you go to the store and try on as many frames as you can until you feel as if you've matched the look of someone more famous than you?

Because I gotta tell you, I just can't picture Anna Wintour standing in front of some model preparing to do a spread for the cover of Vogue and saying, "Darling this is all wrong -- Give me more Cylon or you'll never work in this town again!"

Look, I know women's fashion isn't easy. I know you all want to look beautiful for who you are and stay up with the current "in" look. I also know that a lot of the featured looks out there are created to accent women who's bodies resemble frikkin' toothpicks. But it seems like far too many of you get stuck in these trends where the basic idea is to somehow squeeze yourself into some approximation of one of these toothpick-inspired looks, even if you aren't a toothpick. I can't imagine that's an easy thing to do or to deal with, especially if your body type isn't exactly what you think it should be.

But until you get to that place (or even better reach a point where you're more personally happy with the features you were born with) you've got to start thinking proactively. For example, if you've still got a little baby fat on your cheeks, and like to wear your hair big, then large glasses might be able work for you. But if you've nailed down one of those feather-thin hairstyles to match your slender head shape and your nose is really small, then big shades are going to simply swallow up your face, and all that's gonna be left is a tiny mouth and a set of anime eyes.

After all, this isn't fashion -- it's shades:

They either work or they don't.

I mean, you wouldn't put monster truck tires on a mini-cooper, or try to give Hello Kitty a set of double-D implants, would you?

Then why the hell do you keep trying to staple those twin satellite dishes onto your face?

However, if you've made the decision that no matter what you need to stick with trying to keep up with the current crop of uber-skinny wackadoos that say you got to have thin hair styles and drooping necklines that show off the shoulder bones that tell everyone how much you don't eat, then you need to perhaps take a step back from the sunglass counter and think it over before you make a really big mistake.

Try setting up some basic ground rules to help you out, things that even the most inexperienced fashionistas can understand.

For instance:

1) If your sunglasses are bigger than your dog, cease and fucking desist.
2) If you cannot bear to be out of the loop and simply must wear big shades -- can you at least stop doing this?

  

And finally, understand that there's a very fine line between being hip and looking like you could easily break one. Because it's not like big sunglasses are all that new an idea -- women have been wearing them for years.

Ooh, that's hot.

[Listening to:  Garbage – "Parade" ]