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September 28, 2004
Personality over appearance
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Ben Buettner Sports Editor |
College is a time for many things, as many college grads will tell you. Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, and politics; they all make sense on how they are incorporated into student's lives. Yet there are some things that still catch me off guard, with all of the experimenting taking place.
High school seems to be the height of students trying to make a statement with their appearance. In high school though, these statements make more sense. Younger people emulating something they think is "cool" because their personalities have not blossomed to be able to express these beliefs in words, many times.
So by that logic, the expression of the "Gothic" community, for example, would dictate that they have not developed their personalities. I can't say for sure, but I would put down a wager that within the next 10 years, most individuals will change their wardrobe from what they are dressed like now.
I would think that it would come to them sooner than later that it is TOO HOT to wear laced up, knee high, black boots, tucked in black jeans, tucked into a tight, black Rob Zombie T-shirt, under long black hair with the outstanding dog collar in the middle of the summer - at record temperatures. Unless they love skin rashes and overwhelming stenches in every crevice of their body.
I'm having trouble grasping this new skater/rock star portrayal with the tight jeans that leave half of your butt revealed. It's not a sagging style but more of a "not enough to cover your package" in the front and mysteriously sagging layer in the back that doesn't need to sag. Maybe there is a butt cleavage objective with the squeezing of the cheeks with the belt.
Then, there are the tattoos. I was recently watching pro football one Sunday and a commercial came on where two guys were fishing. They pulled Bud Lights out of the cooler and a referee jumped out of the water and threw a flag for drinking tasteless beer. He went on to throw an additional flag for an "unoriginal" tattoo (barbwire around the arm); also stating that he was trying to fit in.
Spilling my own tasteless Bud Light, I laughed about how true it was. Not the tasteless beer part, but rather the barbwire tattoo around a man's arm, trying to fit in. That pretty much sums up the tattoos.
While many tattoos do have intimate symbolisms, there are 100 more that people will be bothered later in life by, by having to explain why they got them and why so many other people have the same thing. There are so many butterflies, barbwires, names of second-baby-daddy’s, and that one tattoo design you see on the back of one out of 20 girls.
I am not above this unoriginality though; I wear cargo shorts almost exclusively. I found myself one day observing how many college males wear cargo shorts; it seemed to be about three out of five. You might ask “Why are you looking at what males wear below the belt so often?” which is a valid question. And to keep my wife's confidence in my heterosexuality, I do not have any interest in males, “not that there's anything wrong with that!” as Seinfeld might say. I just wear cargo shorts because I don't like jean shorts and regular khaki shorts seem too formal.
I also wanted to understand these extra small T-shirts on the fake rock stars. Maybe it's just the comfort factor, again, with my overflowing love handles and flabby man breasts that I would be uncomfortable showing. I guess you can't deny it if the chicks dig it.
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