Billie Joe, Kurt, Eddie: ugly ducklings unite
He’s hot, he’s cool and man, when he hocks up a nice phlegmy
loogie he makes you want to Shoop. He is Billie Joe, lead singer of
Green Day, and possibly the ’90s version of the sexiest man
alive.
And why shouldn’t he be?
Billie Joe has dapper green hair and crooked teeth. He’s never
taken a shower and, don’t quote me on this, probably doesn’t have
very good table manners. I bet he doesn’t even know which fork to
use for dessert.
The man is ugly as sin and Bruins beware, your younger sisters
love him.
As a college-educated student, I often lose touch with the
goings on in the entertainment industry, you know, with all my
readings of Plato and such. But even when I’m not reading Faulkner
on the Stairmaster or Joyce in the shower, I’m too busy doing all
those Seventeen magazine sex quizzes to delve into the confusing
world of pop culture.
But one simple visit to the outside world can change
everything.
When I go home I cannot get my 16-year-old sister to shut up
about Billie Joe.
Billie Joe this, Billie Joe that. I want to have Billie Joe’s
baby. Billie Joe is so rad. I’d sell my soul to the devil to sleep
with Billie Joe. Mom beats me with a big stick. Billie Joe, Billie
Joe, blah, blah, blah  it’s more Green Day than even KROQ
could stand.
But it brings up an interesting point.
The fact that many, many, many young women want to sleep with
Billie Joe, a bona-fide rock star, is no surprise. Every era has an
ugly rocker icon.
The ’60s had Mick Jagger. The ’70s had Mick Jagger and Stephen
Tyler. The ’80s had Stephen Tyler and Mick Jagger.
But all in all, it’s pretty much true that rock has always been
run by pretty boys.
It started with Elvis and it ended with Glam Rock. Hell,
glammers of the ’80s were so pretty, so effeminate, you probably
never even realized that groups like the Bangles were all men!
But oh how things have changed.
At this mid-point of the decade there is an undeniable trend
hitting the world of music.
The meek, the plain, the "people with good personalities," the
musicians with the all the looks and charisma for radio  the
losers, are taking over the air-waves. And we, as young people, are
embracing this.
Before Billie Joe inherited his position as "Sweet Valley
High’s" most wanted, another creature of beauty, Nirvana’s Kurt
Cobain, was the talk of the town.
Sure, Cobain’s hair looked greasier than McDonald’s fries and
his unshaven face was less kept than an elephant’s ass  but
please, let’s not be so superficial.
At least Cobain was friendly, err, outgoing, err, amiable, umm,
didn’t mope around a lot. Uh, maybe not. Well, at least you could
really understand him through his lyrics.
But for whatever reason, there is no denying that Cobain and the
band he fronted, Nirvana, were unbelievably popular.
Everyone loved Nirvana Their fans encapsulated the entire
spectrum of stereotypes and generalizations. Nirvana was phreaked
to at frat parties and mourned to in coffee shops.
Presumably, one the of reasons Cobain offed himself was that the
same people who picked on him for being different in high school
were the ones worshiping him in concert.
Our values have certainly been changing.
Eddie Vedder, who  for those who have been locked in a
closet for the past four years  is the lead singer of Pearl
Jam, dropped out of San Dieguito High School in San Diego, where he
just didn’t fit in.
Today, he is that school’s greatest bragging point. While he may
have been persecuted then, now, he could return as a hero. Eddie
could rule the school.
Which is every losers dream, isn’t it? To go back and prove them
wrong.
But no longer.
Look at our other more recent sex symbols. Soul Asylum’s David
Pirner looks like a bad version of Axl Rose on crack and is still
dating one of the hottest women in America, Winona Ryder. Nine Inch
Nails’ Trent Reznor used to clean toilets in Cleveland, and now
thousands of women want to fuck him like an animal.
In fact, if Charlie Brown was rock star today, even he could get
laid.
And these events have had a trickle down effect that have
resonated all the way down to the most structured, hierarchical,
deeply ingrained feudal systems in America, high school
popularity.
Guys who sat around reading poetry and smoking are getting
dates. Being out of fashion is in fashion. And being a loser, for
lack of a better word, is cool.
Why is superficiality no longer an issue? Since when do high
school girls date the showerless guys with green hair? Since when
does the captain of the football team stay home on a Friday night,
and the captain of the debate team go out? When the hell did the
losers take over?
And goddammit, why didn’t this happen while I was still in high
school?
Stevens is a second-year political science student. He makes
films for HBO. Stevens’ e-mail address is izzy6af. His column runs
every other Tuesday.