High-tops, sweat pants and the conformity of individuality
Date 11/29/2001 12:00 AM | Topic: Opinion"I'm reveling in my plainness," said my roommate, Karina, in response to our trip to Seattle over Thanksgiving break. Arriving back in Decorah, I wasn't reveling exactly.
Being in Seattle made me realize a few things.
1. Decorah is quiet and inexpensive.
2. Luther is conservative.
3. I am boring.
The people I met there were definitely friendly-at least the retailers and the elderly were. I didn't have the opportunity to talk to many people my age. We walked through the Capitol Hill area, a region that had been described to me previously as "hip and funky" and "where the freaks live."
A tightly clothed woman with pink streaks in her bleached hair walking a small dog dyed blue. A man with more metal adorning his face than Pinhead from Hellraiser. A girl with spiked hair and ubiquitous retro garb tracing bronze dance steps cemented into the sidewalk. Tattoos, piercings, dyed or spiked hair, Beatlesque hair, old-school shoes.
Although freaky in my own "uncool" manner, I realized that to someone else, my eyes might appropriately be modified by words like country-bumpkin.
In response to the increased hip-factor in Seattle, I felt yawn-inducing, uninteresting, not "different" enough, too much like the way I've been since birth: no blue hair, no "slave" tattoo, no tongue ring, no nose ring.
I did welcome the absence of the Midwest's famed fashion faux pas: tapered pants, a sports team T-shirt and white high-top tennis shoes. But, it was also scary letting go of the immediate acceptance and disregard for personal style those high-tops make admissible.
In terms of fashion, we are fairly indiscriminate here. None of us dress exactly like anyone else, and at first glance, we all basically look the same.
Of course, we are more than our clothes or our appearance. The paradox seems to be that at its core, "individuality" could be classified as a form of conformity. Any piercing I could get has been done by someone before me. Plus, I would most likely be piercing my tongue because it's "in" now.
I realized in Seattle that my quest to find the second-hand shirt that could perfectly emblematize the point I'm at in life or be the embodiment of my essence was an unattainable pursuit.
I wouldn't be sad if sweatpants and white high-tops were as stigmatized as alcohol at Luther. However, I don't know how I would react if Luther suddenly looked like The Simpsons meet Marilyn Manson. I will contend that freakiness and hipness are relative. One person's shock at a nipple piercing might be similar to another's horror at seeing someone wearing heather gray cotton sweatpants in public.
The bottom line is: it's important to be yourself, to know yourself and not to search for yourself solely in the clothes you wear. It's also important to be an individual, as conformist as it may be to do so.
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Natalie Mindrum
Editor-In-Chief
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