Carolina asked his daughter Miana and her friend Katie what's popular with, as he put it, “their ilk,” and a few moments later he forwarded me this e- mail: “Daddy, why are my friends ‘ilk’? My friends aren't ilk, they're freaks. We wear tanks, Rainbows, camis, jean shorts, Bermudas, Hollister is big, label stores mostly, skater shoes (i.e. Vans, etnies, things like that), ripped things (shorts, jeans, khakis), messy buns for hair, side bangs as well, hair bands around the wrist; for safe keeping yaknow, and that's pretty much it. We layer, it's all the rage. We also wear a lot of hoodies and zip- ups. Ta da, your window into teenage girl- dom/fashion. Don't forget the short, preppy mini skirts that the sluts wear. Yeah, I said sluts. Ha. Don't tell Mommy.”
It took me about a half hour, using my trusty translator Google, to decipher her message. And in case you're as out of it as I am, allow me to enlighten you: Rainbows are flip- flops; Hollister is a brand that sells rather normal- looking clothes like T- shirts and jeans (even though all of the clothing pictured on its website is inexplicably scrunched up and wrinkled, as if it had been left in the dryer too long), and skater shoes are sneakers for skateboarders, with thick rubber soles, air pockets in the heel, and occasional wild print designs.
On to the next glimpse of adolescent cool. “My boy likes to dress like a stoner,” a friend in a New England college town e- mailed me, “but with oversized pants (he likes these made of hemp) and boxers showing. The T- shirts are all of our old friends, the Dead, Jimi Hen-drix, Bob Marley, The Who, etc. The hair is long or shaved all the way off, the sneakers are huge and not tied. No visible socks. A Hacky Sack or skateboard is usually attached in some way.”
Not sure what a Hacky Sack is? Me neither. Again, I had to look that one up on Google. I think the easiest way to explain it is to compare it to the beanbags I used to play with as a kid. My mother used to sew them by the dozen with leftover scraps of fabric, and, yes, sheactually filled them with dried beans or seeds. (I suppose that sounds like something out of
Little House on the Prairie,
but actually it happened in the 1960s in New York.)
Well, now they sell little beanbaggy thingies for about $13 (I guess no one's mother sews toys from scraps of fabric anymore) and they are called Hacky Sacks. (I guess it wouldn't be cool to call them beanbags.) The biggest difference is, you don't catch or throw them with your hands; you kick them and do all kinds of other fancy footwork to keep them aloft. The game is actually called “footbag” and sometimes kids stand around in a circle playing it.
Next I called on a friend in Spokane, Washington, who has three boys, to get his take on local styles. He said the oldest has “long cultivated a type of gangsta look, with the sideways fitted baseball cap, wild pattern T- shirts, really baggy shorts and pants and the tops of his boxer shorts showing.” Sound familiar?
His middle son wears a lot of Nike- label clothes, listens to hip- hop stations, and talks like a rapper. The youngest of the guys is into “basketball and football jerseys with baggy mesh shorts that have lots of holes and are three sizes too big.”
I'm considering asking this family if they'd care to adopt a fourth son, because clearly Taz could move to Spokane tomorrow and fit right in.
But the one thing I don't quite get about all these modes of adolescent fashion is that the clothes don'tnecessarily correlate with who you are. The jock look, I've noticed, is big even among kids who haven't been on a team since they were forced to take sides in second- grade dodgeball (before schools banned dodge-ball because it was too dangerous).
And surfer-dude style—floral-print shirts, baggy shorts and flip- flops— isn't just for guys at Malibu. I've seen kids waiting for the subway dressed this way, with no surfboard in sight.
The hip- hop set,
It took me about a half hour, using my trusty translator Google, to decipher her message. And in case you're as out of it as I am, allow me to enlighten you: Rainbows are flip- flops; Hollister is a brand that sells rather normal- looking clothes like T- shirts and jeans (even though all of the clothing pictured on its website is inexplicably scrunched up and wrinkled, as if it had been left in the dryer too long), and skater shoes are sneakers for skateboarders, with thick rubber soles, air pockets in the heel, and occasional wild print designs.
On to the next glimpse of adolescent cool. “My boy likes to dress like a stoner,” a friend in a New England college town e- mailed me, “but with oversized pants (he likes these made of hemp) and boxers showing. The T- shirts are all of our old friends, the Dead, Jimi Hen-drix, Bob Marley, The Who, etc. The hair is long or shaved all the way off, the sneakers are huge and not tied. No visible socks. A Hacky Sack or skateboard is usually attached in some way.”
Not sure what a Hacky Sack is? Me neither. Again, I had to look that one up on Google. I think the easiest way to explain it is to compare it to the beanbags I used to play with as a kid. My mother used to sew them by the dozen with leftover scraps of fabric, and, yes, sheactually filled them with dried beans or seeds. (I suppose that sounds like something out of
Little House on the Prairie,
but actually it happened in the 1960s in New York.)
Well, now they sell little beanbaggy thingies for about $13 (I guess no one's mother sews toys from scraps of fabric anymore) and they are called Hacky Sacks. (I guess it wouldn't be cool to call them beanbags.) The biggest difference is, you don't catch or throw them with your hands; you kick them and do all kinds of other fancy footwork to keep them aloft. The game is actually called “footbag” and sometimes kids stand around in a circle playing it.
Next I called on a friend in Spokane, Washington, who has three boys, to get his take on local styles. He said the oldest has “long cultivated a type of gangsta look, with the sideways fitted baseball cap, wild pattern T- shirts, really baggy shorts and pants and the tops of his boxer shorts showing.” Sound familiar?
His middle son wears a lot of Nike- label clothes, listens to hip- hop stations, and talks like a rapper. The youngest of the guys is into “basketball and football jerseys with baggy mesh shorts that have lots of holes and are three sizes too big.”
I'm considering asking this family if they'd care to adopt a fourth son, because clearly Taz could move to Spokane tomorrow and fit right in.
But the one thing I don't quite get about all these modes of adolescent fashion is that the clothes don'tnecessarily correlate with who you are. The jock look, I've noticed, is big even among kids who haven't been on a team since they were forced to take sides in second- grade dodgeball (before schools banned dodge-ball because it was too dangerous).
And surfer-dude style—floral-print shirts, baggy shorts and flip- flops— isn't just for guys at Malibu. I've seen kids waiting for the subway dressed this way, with no surfboard in sight.
The hip- hop set,
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