Bad Trends

Girls
My friend emailed me the other day about the latest annoying hipster-girl trend of headbands and the Bohemian-Apache-Lass look, witnessed on the L train one recent morning. It wouldn't be quite so eggregious if stylish people were doing it and vaguely “getting it right”, but inevitably it is always some overly-accessorized Christmas tree of a girl. AND they are never skinny. One must be skinny to pull off the delicate-skull-string-circumventing-forehead look, accompanied by the requisite messy hair, blank, blurry eyes, and self-consciously tattered cut-offs. MUST. I am also troubled by those weird little elf-boot sandals that these same girls are slouching around town in this summer. They look like Sandy Duncan trouncing off to a Peter Pan rehearsal after her weekly Weight-Watcher’s meeting. Oh, and how about the “Nicole Ritchie” bug-eyed-shades-and-scarf-over-head look from three years ago that has resurfaced on all the wrong heads? Between the gigantic sunglasses and swaddling, engulfing headwraps, they are no longer girls, but simply noses and necks. Don't they realize that all of this effluvia only calls more attention to their cankles?

Boys
Clam diggers. Capri pants. Skinny Jeans, with their stovepipe legs rolled fetchingly into twee little cuffs, just like the teenaged gang girl from West Side Story. Often these are accompanied by a tepid and low-slung flimsy sneaker, or sneakette, as I prefer to call them. First it was only the gays, now it is the straights and in-betweens too. What gives? Let me be clear, there are very few guys who can truly carry this off without resembling a not-that-hot lesbian. Particularly if topped off with an awkward bowl cut. I suppose this is, at least partially, why they are all prone to growing those beards now, in order to more clearly differentiate themselves from any given member of Le Tigre. Somehow, they just look like burgeoning cult leaders of some pervy, androgynous band of apple-assed, bearded ladies. It's a good thing they closed down the McCarren Pool, or they likely would have started a tent-city and made it their cult's home base. Then the headband-wearing Sandy Duncans could have moved in as their devoted followers and concubines, relegated to cropping their leaders' pants and washing their fledgling beards. Holy Hare Krishna!

Often I wonder where these people and their outfits come from. I feel like New York City used to be more discerning, but with the bad economy and all, it has lowered its standards and eased the requirements for entry. I vote we get the velvet ropes back in front of NYC, or at the very least, create a mandatory style guide to be handed out at every airport, toll-booth, bridge and tunnel. I think Paris might appreciate this too. They have their own problems.