Monday, October 27, 1997
Unrepentant fashion queen revels in her ‘trendonitis’
COLUMN: Before pointing at rampant consumerism, see if the shoe
fits you
You might guess that being in front of a computer all day typing
away at the Daily Bruin would result in tendonitis – you know, when
your joints are all swollen and you can no longer move your fingers
without cursing.
Well, instead, I’ve developed trend-onitis. It’s even worse than
sore joints and the inability to write a term paper. It involves
the inflammation of the closet: swollen with faux fur purses,
flowered bell bottoms and baby tees – and feverish delusions of
grandeur involving the insatiable urge for "Clueless" to make the
long-awaited comeback to the big screen. (Hey, if Jennifer Grey did
it in "Dirty Dancing," then why can’t Alicia the fashion
queen?)
Let me explain further for those who may not understand — to
those who may think they have avoided falling prey to the
victimizing consumer industry, especially the fashion world.
I will fully admit that I am a victim of trends. I sport those
itty-bitty girly-girl backpacks. I’ve purchased those oh-so-cute
Jackie O sunglasses. I’ve endured the ongoing debate about whether
or not my white shiny Rampage jacket is tacky plastic or Superfly
vinyl (by the way, it is vinyl, you know). And I’ve walked up and
down Bruin Walk with callused feet in an effort to clippity-clop to
class in unbendable wooden platforms – and for what? So I can look
like some freaky yet updated throwback to the ’70s?
No, it’s all an unconscious, and sometimes even conscious,
effort to keep up with the trends.
Maybe it’s my Ohioan roots that have caused my swirling spin
into the psychological world of "in-ness." Being a newly
transplanted Los Angeleno whose native land is the home of the
National Tractor Pull (no joke), where movies arrive to our
middle-America mini-malls decades after films in the average
metropolis come out at Blockbuster and where teens look to L.L.
Bean catalogues for fashion tips (Hmmm, should I purchase the
eggplant backpack or the sepia woolen socks?), it’s no wonder that
I’ve fallen prey to L.A.’s glam scam.
I mean, hell, where else could you spot Charlie Sheen and his
6-foot girlfriend wearing a sequined bodysuit (the girlfriend, not
Charlie) at a Westwood mini-mart?
But for whatever reasons I fish from my pile of
soon-to-be-outdated-in-less-than-a-month disposable wardrobe before
I step out on a Friday night, I feel secure enough to say that "My
name is Nerissa, and I am a (proud) trendoid!" Now before anyone
commits me to a 12-step program, let me share my reasons for saying
"If I go, then everyone’s gotta go."
Granted, I still don’t listen to Star (I really don’t care if
Sonny came home or not), and I can honestly say I have yet to sink
to the ultimate level of walking to class while talking on a cell
phone to schedule an appointment for a nose job, but so what if
some people have? To each her own, right?
I mean, whether or not you shop at Aaardvark’s on Melrose Avenue
or the Beverly Center, you dye your hair with Kool-Aid or L’Oreal,
you only call other people’s pagers but don’t own one yourself or
you have a color-coordinated set of pagers to match your shoes and
purses, you’ve become fair game to the big bad Puff Daddy of
consumerism and, thus, the world of trends.
And it doesn’t stop at what you wear or what you buy: It’s what
you eat, what you drive, what you smell, see and breathe.
Before you think I’m getting too postmodern on you, just stop
and think. I mean, Micky Dee’s became the Mack Daddy of all Big
Macs for a reason, and you see more Honda Civics than
beanie-wearing Pink Dot Volkswagen lookalikes on the road,
right?
I give the ultimate props to those who claim complete freedom
from trends, but wearing Woody Allen glasses and swinger shirts
does not a trend-breaker make. It seems that, now, the newest and
biggest trend of all is to break the trends. So eccentricity has in
itself become, well, kind of normal. It’s not so shocking anymore
to see multiple body piercings, messily sculpted and over-bleached
tresses and vintage everything (hey, even the catwalk affirms this
trend.) Granted, the degree of how great this trend is varies upon
geographical location, or say from one UC campus to another (ahem,
Berkeley!), but a trend is a trend is a trend.
So before you spout out that someone is a hip-hugger-wearing,
Star-listening, sport-utility-vehicle-driving hootchy-cootchy mama,
look in the mirror. You might just have yourself committed to TA –
Trendoholics Anonymous.
Nerissa Pacio, a third-year English student, can be found in the
confines of the Daily Bruin secretly pining over Vogue fashion but
is stuck writing about it behind a computer.