Ale to the victors! (a sign seen in front of the drive-through Beer Depot)
So last night I went out to meet up with some classmates for some drinks. This being one of the first weekends of school, it was a huge party weekend in Ann Arbor, and as I walked home at around midnight (not wanting to stay out too late due to the football game today) I kept passing large groups of drunken undergrads and multitudes of parties spilling into the street.
I felt old. Grumpy and old. Muttering to myself, kids these days, look at them stumbling around, drunken fools, and the girls think this makes them attractive to the men - it just makes them easy...and of course I realized that a few years ago I would have been one of those stumbling girls.
But I have noticed that more so than when I was in college (or maybe I just didn't notice it back then), all girls look like clones. They dress the same, have the same vapid facial expressions, have the same haircuts. I thought ages 15-21 were a time of rebellion - but I find myself at almost 25 being the one with the punk haircut, the spiked collar, dressed all in black when I go out. What happened to healthy teenage "rebellion"? I realize it's not really rebellion, but when I was that age, I was all about wearing raver pants with old army jackets, smoking pipes or cigarettes through holders, and in general being pretentiously different (by which I mean I looked the same as a lot of other people) - but now, there isn't even that "looking different by which we mean looking the same as a relatively large subsection of the population" trend - everyone just looks exactly the same.
Also, a lot of people seem to like dressing like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and the like. I guess these are the kids who "grew up" on that kind of music - where it wasn't the music so much as the appearance that mattered, whereas our generation was the Nirvana generation, which was all about looking studiously grungy but more so about the music (I maintain that I'm not sloppy in my day-to-day dressing - just retro-grungy).
So this was sort of depressing.
Oh well, I'm off to buy some Michigan apparel (realized that all of mine is ancient and falling apart) so I can look like everyone else at the game. But that's different. It's a ritual expression of mass support for the same team - and I wouldn't want to be caught dead looking different.
I felt old. Grumpy and old. Muttering to myself, kids these days, look at them stumbling around, drunken fools, and the girls think this makes them attractive to the men - it just makes them easy...and of course I realized that a few years ago I would have been one of those stumbling girls.
But I have noticed that more so than when I was in college (or maybe I just didn't notice it back then), all girls look like clones. They dress the same, have the same vapid facial expressions, have the same haircuts. I thought ages 15-21 were a time of rebellion - but I find myself at almost 25 being the one with the punk haircut, the spiked collar, dressed all in black when I go out. What happened to healthy teenage "rebellion"? I realize it's not really rebellion, but when I was that age, I was all about wearing raver pants with old army jackets, smoking pipes or cigarettes through holders, and in general being pretentiously different (by which I mean I looked the same as a lot of other people) - but now, there isn't even that "looking different by which we mean looking the same as a relatively large subsection of the population" trend - everyone just looks exactly the same.
Also, a lot of people seem to like dressing like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and the like. I guess these are the kids who "grew up" on that kind of music - where it wasn't the music so much as the appearance that mattered, whereas our generation was the Nirvana generation, which was all about looking studiously grungy but more so about the music (I maintain that I'm not sloppy in my day-to-day dressing - just retro-grungy).
So this was sort of depressing.
Oh well, I'm off to buy some Michigan apparel (realized that all of mine is ancient and falling apart) so I can look like everyone else at the game. But that's different. It's a ritual expression of mass support for the same team - and I wouldn't want to be caught dead looking different.
posted by Nixie at 9:00 AM
3 Comments:
why aren't there any kids at UM with asymmetrical haircuts, decked out in black like New Order? i just assumed that at least east quaders would dress like east villagers. how disappointing.
are you kidding me? go to the half-ass. or the art school. unless they all graduated, you'll trip over them there.
things have not changed much, Zappa sung about this in the 60's.
"be a loyal plastic person!"
"it can't happen here!"
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