Every Generation Makes Idiotic Fashion Choices

I look back at old photos of my teen years and cringe at my fashion choices. It’s not that I was unfashionable. Au contraire, I strove to conform.

My nephew laughed until he almost wet himself on seeing my photo from Homecoming 1973. I sported double knit polyester bell bottom pants with a cuff and a natty checkered design, a burgundy double knit polyester sports jacket with wide lapels, a nylon shirt with pointy collar and a white bow tie as big as my head. My hair was feathered and held in place by a crust of hairspray. My shoes were two toned and stacked. I was beautiful, like an Easter egg.

On less formal occasions, I would wear my shirt collar over my jacket collar or lose the jacket and wear a shirt with a wild design. On really casual occasions, we wore bell bottom jeans and tee shirts. Converse All Star basketball shoes were a must. I had a pair of jeans with pictures of trees on the legs. I also had a crushed velvet vest that made me look like Keith Partridge, or so I believed.

Our music was annoying to our elders at the time. Now, of course, you can sometimes hear Steppenwolf in the elevator. As the 70s progressed, music devolved into disco.

I remember looking at my parents’ yearbooks and photos from high school and thinking that they all looked as if they were already 40 years old as sophomores. They didn’t look like kids at all, but by all accounts they frightened their elders with their clothing styles and music.

I’m not so much frightened as amused by youngsters’ music and fashion. The era of enormous pants and hip hop was hilarious. It seems to be passing. How can I tell? Because rural white kids are just now adopting it in some places. Anyway, kids in big pants and improperly worn headgear or do-rags seemed like clowns to me. I just couldn’t look at them with a straight face. How do you evade law enforcement with your pants around your knees and your shoelaces untied? And if your sneakers light up, you are an easy target. Could it be that big pants and untied shoes were created by cops to make kids easier to catch?

I predict that in 40 or 50 years, rap and hip hop will be considered “elevator music”. Old coots in rest homes will wear giant pants and listen to podcasts of gangsta rappers while their grandkids look at them as the lamest people on earth. The grandkids will freak the codgers out, what with their well tailored clothing and well groomed hair and good manners. The youngsters’ music will be rebelliously melodic and require real talent to perform.