Stylin’ Like Tom Cruise (Part II)…

    “Oh the weather outside is frightful and the fire is so delightful!” Boy do I love snow days! Because of a recent snowstorm that piled about eight inches of snow and a layer of ice over all of Miami, we do not have school today. So instead of classes I am relaxing, enjoying the day off and writing to you about fashion.
    The wonderful thing about fashion is that there is no such thing as a universal Fashion. There are things that more fashionable in some situations and others that are not. At the same time there are some aspects of fashion that are vital for certain situations (i.e. a suit in an interview) and totally unnecessary to ever wear (http://blogs.reuters.com/oddly-enough/files/2007/10/fashion-300.jpg). What will be discussed in this blog is a brief discussion of each of the different lesser-known fashions here at Miami. These are Geek wear, Goth/punk wear, and finally Counter Culture wear. While none of three is overly prevalent at Miami, they are important because they create an interesting cultural diversity between the students. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on each:

• Geek Wear! Having lived in both the Honors and Scholars dorm and the Scholar Leader dorm (it sounds worse than it is) I realize that I have had a lot of time to determine exactly what Geek wear looks like. The interesting thing is that it is difficult to exactly determine what Geek wear is because most of the geeks and nerds at Miami try (key word is “try”) to stay moderately trendy and usually align themselves closely to other fashions. That being said there are definitely some giveaways for people who go out of their way to show their nerdliness. These fashion trends can span anywhere from slicked over hair to habitually boring hairdos, or jeans that are two inches too short to dragon shirts. However fun each of these different faux pas is to point out and mock, there is sadly no universal “Geek wear” with which I can make crass generalizations about; that may be an testament to the uniqueness of nerds.
• Goth/Punk Wear: These individuals are the ones that angry parents and grandparents cite as examples of how someone “went down the wrong path.” For instance:

“Billy, don’t you get your ears pierced! You know what will happen; first it will be ears, then eyebrows, and next thing you know you look like George Smith’s boy dressed in black women’s clothes and eyeliner. Do you want that?!?”

This fictitious quote displays exactly what people who dress hyperbolically want – attention. For whatever reason the attention given to people who dress radically out-of-place from their surroundings can either be destructive for a person or can help shape who they are. Miami is no exception. It is easy to draw correlation from the drastic facial reactions people make to pieces of clothing that out of the norm and “unsightly.” Just for fun, I like to wear really ridiculous-colored Ray Ban-esque glasses to class just to read people’s reactions. It is a wonderful experience because you can see them either smirk, point their nose in the air, or pretend like they don’t notice your blatantly out-of-place glasses. These reactions are what make a person more noticeable, like gothic or punk wear will do, and on a campus as large as Miami’s it is really important for people to find ways to make themselves feel noticeable. Pink Floyd had it right when they sang, “All in all you're just another brick in the wall.” In the end we are all really similar looking and it is often the paint over top of us (that being our style choices) that makes each of us visually different. Gothic clothing is just a way of taking that brick, dislodging it slightly and throwing some black paint on it.

• Counter Culture Wear: While this type of style has many different names involving some form of drug, it is pretty universally structured around going against the “norms” of fashion and society. This means that individuals where clothing that does not necessarily make them stand but is just random and unique. For instance, I recently received a Christmas present from my girlfriend that is a black Bert and Ernie t-shirt, except that the drawings of Bert and Ernie are drawn in technicolor lines. It is awesome. I love it and so does everyone else who isn’t lame, why? Because it is unique and random. Those two aspects are so important in counter culture wear that they really define why counter culture is different from other types of fashion, like say Frat wear. This is because counter culture’s goal is to find the coolest and most random clothing just because its fun and that’s the point of that particular fashion type. Contrasting this to Frat wear we can see the opposite; the clothing is supposed to be conservative to reflect the group unity and commitment of the brothers in fraternal strength. Now I ask you, audience, which one of those two styles sound more like something you would want to wear? That’s what I thought.

Well it seems another aspect of culture has come and gone. I want to point out that, although these blogs are put on an honors site, they are meant to be read AND commented on by people other than my boss. So if you are reading these blogs, write me something! It can be anything from “Wow Jared, why do they let you to continue publishing these?” to “I never thought about Frat wear that way; I am now changing my life to become more like you!” Either way, comment and show me that I actually have people reading these things. Thanks and happy Chinese New Year!

Comments

[Olivia]

wow Jared, your girlfriend is awesome!!

[Olivia]

ps i'm cracking up

“I never thought about Frat wear that way; I am now changing my life to become more like you!”

[Kori Austera]

Jared, I'm so excited that I have two readers-- you AND Olivia! LOL, she's in one of my English classes and mentioned my blog one day

[Dave]

you know, there are an awful lot of words on these blogs. how is one supposed to take in all this information without any pictures to help guide?

i at least recapped important things at the end so people who didn't want to read it all (ie. Jason) could skip to the end.

also, don't be hating on frats - brother.

[Kori]

Sorry to disappoint you, but I actually had broomball in that post at one point. Then I realized that it just doesn't compare to gymnastics. Now, regarding the second part of your comment, I think Olivia might be a bit unhappy if I were ogling you. Just throwing that out there.

[Kori]

Oops, that's embarrassing. Your brother left a message, and I transposed you guys in my head.