The Biggest Fashion Faux Pas of Them All...

As with a lot of my entries, they’re generally inspired by a conversation or some sort of life event that might have befallen me. And this one will be no different because this weekend I had a fairly interesting conversation with a stranger about her job as an Assistant Merchandiser for a company which I forget the name of. She gave me the rundown of what she does but then mentioned that despite all the fashion relevant stuff she gets her fingers stuck into, she has absolutely no interest in fashion whatsoever. And this I found amusing because I know that I’ve tried to get in with a company that I had no real interest in at all, and pretty much fell flat on face trying.

But I digress. Spring will soon be upon us and with the turn of the season will come a brand new onset of fashion trends that have already hit the catwalks and will subsequently – if they haven’t already – start climbing onto the hangers of the nearest high street retailer. I can’t remember what year it was, but there was a time when the poncho was big in fashion. Some time before that, there was an emphasis on flares and flared jeans/trousers. Apparently, the checkered shirt has been popular for quite some time now. And does anyone remember when leggings came back in fashion? I believe that may have only been a few years ago actually but it just goes to show that despite the notion of trend setting, things often regurgitate and repeat themselves a little down the line, which leads me to wonder if there’s really a point to all this fashion mallark.

Now, I have a couple of friends who are strongly infatuated with clothes trends and ‘looking good’. They’re the kind of people that prefer quality over quantity – and spare no expenses in order to achieve their moral standards. And I understand this. Sometimes, it’s better to spend a bit more because clothing of a better quality is supposed to last longer…apparently. And I must admit that even I jumped on the bandwagon – to an extent - during my university years when I actually had money to throw around. Heck, without even realising it, I even started following the trend. Back in Spring 2010 (I think), I bought at least three pairs of high-waisted shorts when they were all the rage, but now the rage has turned its nose up and those high-waisted shorts are buried somewhere in the bottom of my wardrobe. But not forgotten. No way! I’m just waiting for the sun to come out because that’s when I’ll use them again. Over the years I’ve become a more practical consumer – I dress for the weather first and foremost. Looking good comes second.

Because yes, we all want to look nice – or our own definition of nice. When we go to a party or a job interview, we want to ‘look the part’ so to speak, but I’ve seen time and time again where people seem to sacrifice logic for this desire to ‘look good’. People see images on television or in magazines of super models and other celebrities looking their ‘best’ and want to look like that. So they spend ridiculous amounts of money on a belt and step outside in the snow freezing their knickers off in order to await the moment when someone comes up to them and says “you look nice”. Because we all gain gratification from compliments – even those of us that find them a little awkward. But some of us - more than others - like to be looked at; some of us like to feel like a million bucks or want to look like Michelle Obama. And so the cycle repeats itself because apparently, the clothes make the man….or the woman.

But what can we do but submit to what the world wants us to look like really? Because when the world says “snoods are hot; earmuffs are so last Saturday”, you can bet your cotton socks that finding earmuffs on the high street is gonna be a chore for you. After all, I once tried searching for a purple top when the season was red. I kid you not when I say that I searched the entire shopping centre – roughly 60 stores - and uncovered ONE top. Needless to say, my shopping experience that day was exhausting. But maybe I didn’t don’t have the correct  attitude towards shopping. After all, retail therapy is supposed to be about swanning about in no particular direction, seeing something you fancy, trying it on to see if it does you justice and then buying it for some unanticipated event. But these days, I‘m pretty quick about it. I often have an idea of what I’m looking for; I’ll dive it, pick it up and dive back out again – no time wasted. Five years ago, I needed a tracksuit. A quick trip to JD Sports and here it is, five years later. Earlier last year, I needed trainers. Thank God for the internet. That took even less time to buy still. But do you think I’ll ever be able to find those items again now? A cheap imitation maybe, but ultimately…probably not.

In fact, I remember having bought a pair of boots which I decided I would wear to a nightclub years ago only to be told by a supposed friend of mine: “you’re wearing those?” with a rising intonation on the end. The same girl told me a little later on that year that what I had been wearing the day we went shopping looked ‘nice’ and that I should “dress like that more often”. I fobbed it off back then but I look back on this now and think to myself what right did she have to approve or disprove of the way I dressed. She owned a leopard print coat for crying out loud. Oh don’t get me wrong. She had the right to dislike it, but to make me feel like there was something wrong with my choice of clothing – and as a friend as well – was not cool. But let’s not sugar coat it. We were never really friends to begin with anyway. We merely hung out with the same people and now we’re no longer in contact. Good times!

The point is, however, that as people we are constantly influenced – even without realising it – and some of us more than others. We are constantly told what we should and shouldn’t wear and as consumers, we buy into everything because the old gets old and the broken or tattered is useless; we don’t mend things anymore, we just toss it in the bin. Alternative, we seek the new and the shiny and these are reinforced by the faces of our favourite songs and movies. But ask yourself this. What’s the point of looking like someone else…or like everyone else really? Wouldn’t it be better to be different. To stand out? Think of the punk cultures of the 1980s. Or maybe that’s just it? We don’t want to ‘stand out’ – not really. We’re afraid to be a little different – to truly be stared at – and that ‘desire for attention’ – is nothing more than yet another method of fitting in with the rest of society.

By let’s push the psychology aside on this one, because clothing’s only surface material really. And at the end of the day, the gloves...and just about everything else - come off. Therefore, in my opinion, fashion’s biggest faux pas is in effect, itself. It seeks to set trends and tell people what to wear and how much to spend and it seeks to do it just about every year – heck, every season – in order to make money off of the strength of our vanity. But truthfully, no one has the right to tell you how to dress but you. So the next time you see a woman walking down the street looking a bit like a tart, don’t sneer at her. Maybe she likes the way she looks. Or some guy who's got a hole in his shirt? Maybe he’s not skint. Maybe he’s setting his own trend. All I know is – currently, I’m the most comfortable in leggings and tracksuit bottoms. And I may not always look the best to someone else, but I like it and truthfully, that’s all that matters.

Bullying ~ Is It Really Ever Over?

I managed to find a rather frightening statistic online that indicates that 46% of children in the UK had been bullied at school at some point in their lives. That’s nearly half the population - if we generalise this figure - and it seems to be on the increase. School is just another survival mechanism. What we learn and how well we do academically is supposed to set us up for the future and enable us to get the better jobs when we enter into the world of adulthood (obviously this is debatable right now in this day and age, but that’s another topic entirely). But also, it teaches us how to get along with others. We develop friendships with likeminded people; we develop our interpersonal skills; we learn what is right and what is wrong and then we do what feels right.

Obviously, however, what feels right isn’t necessarily what is right. Some people are naturally more outgoing or extrovert while others are more withdrawn or reserved. These are the people that are usually targeted by those of us who find joy in picking on others and while we could assess this behaviour until the cow’s come home, it’s never realised just how much of an impact bullying can have. Granted, children – or bullies in general – don’t consider this when they choose to act. My primary school head-teacher didn’t think that the child he took part in bullying in his youth would jump off of London Bridge because he couldn’t take it anymore. Nor have others considered that the reason why someone self harms might be because they think they deserve it – after all, everyone else clearly thinks so.

I was reading an interesting article the other day and the following statement hit close to home:

“If you are or have ever been a victim of bullying and failed to do anything about it, your confidence has most likely been deflated. If you couldn’t stand up to your bully, you probably felt ashamed, like I did… This lack of confidence can carry over to your adult life…”

I was bullied in primary school and indirectly during secondary school. I know the reasons why and knowing what has become of these people warms my soul a little – karma’s a bitch, ain’t it? But even though I feel like I may have made my peace with it all, I look at the way I evaluate myself and conduct myself and it leads me to realise that I haven’t.

The article went on the further explain how this lack of confidence generated through bullying can stop you from doing things such as approaching that good-looking guy at the bar or something along the lines of asking for a raise (this seems to be a female specific thing, however). And I realise that I do this. In my entire life, I have only ever directly told one guy that I found him attractive* – and this was over the internet. Most of the time, I’ve been pursued by someone else. When someone has rather rudely been smoking in the queues at Thorpe Park, I’ll usually let it go despite how much it irritates the crap out of me; the same goes for queue jumpers – although, I’ve been working on this. Ultimately, for the most part, I am a docile person. I don’t like to make waves or cause trouble – even when it might be necessary. I find confrontation terrifying – such like I experienced yesterday at work when an angry married couple came in first thing shouting the odds about an issue that wasn’t even my fault.

I’m not damaged to the point of depression, but I am not as assertive as I’d like to be – it really depends on the situation. At the same time, however, I am an adult and a woman at that, which means I have the ability to remove myself from an uncomfortable situation. In school, however, this is not the case. Children are forced to endure because it’s the law that they attend school, but no matter how many anti-bullying campaigns arise or how many times a teacher is told, it doesn’t detract from the fact that bullying is on the rise. And where there’s bullying, there’s low self esteem and in some cases, self-hate. And where there’s self-hate, there comes a failure to function adequately in society when is that not what society wants – its people to behave in uniformity; in a socially accepted manner?

But humans are constantly subject to human error and we continue to make bad choices as part of every day life. We try to make up for it by instigating these anti-bullying campaigns and zero-tolerance measures in school and sometimes they work, but when a child ventures outside those school gates or grows up and enters into the real world, these movements lose their power. What’s more is that society has a habit of shoving all the problem kids into one place. I remember hearing a rumour that when a school changes its name to incorporate the word “Academy”, it’s generally because it's quite a bad school. Similarly, an ex supervisor of mine now works in a school that specifically takes in problem children. These children make friends with other problem children which strengthens the nature of their issues, so to speak. They run circles around the teachers that they know they can get around and while the school may have measures in place, they’ll continue to take in these children because the more of them they get, the more money the school gets.

Imagine that. Making money out of the misfortune of others? Haven’t heard that one before...

Fortunately, children are impressionable and if you isolate a child – even a bully – and work with them, I feel that they can be reformed in some shape or...form, but society just doesn’t have enough of these resources. And with jobs few and far between, it doesn’t have the man power either. So we get trapped in a cycle. Bullies pick their targets; targets become victims; victims may even become bullies, or they grow up emotionally crippled (no matter how small that scar is) and pass this on to the next generation.

Sad, isn’t it? :/

*two, if you count the confidence I gained via drinking excessive amounts of alcohol at a Staff Christmas Party