Random Unrelated Image: People Holding Large Things
Walking along the aisle in Target, I notice the signs for boy’s pants. On the sign, there’s a six-year-old dressed up like a modern rapper. Thug attire, baby blue headband with random insignia, baby blue jersey shirt of same random insignia, and baby blue sweatpants. $15 thrift store I-swear-I-bought-it-in-the-mall grey puffy jacket. You can hide a few Uzis under there, a nine millimeter, a crowbar, a brightly colored energy drink, a basketball, anything and everything the modern typical teenager needs. But this kid is six. He’s black, he’s white, he’s whatever, race is an annoyance now more than a trademark. The youth that once was so happy and joyous is gone from these suburban urban country-style kids. The plague of a standardized fashion has gripped the entire age group now extended into the single-digit years and kids of all geographical location.
I won’t mention what’s in the girl department. Let’s just say walking around the mall will reveal more preteen stomachs than even a child pornographer could imagine. We’re a society of stomachs, piercing, drive-by readiness, and younger-aged development. The punk rock kids are the counterculture, but in the process they’ve only proven themselves just as bad, but without the local department store’s attention. The black-clad entities, draped in white skin that looks like they applied too much acne scars cream, and masqueraded melancholy, “fight the power” with their collective subconscious woes.
Hope is the destruction that we seek. Hope for getting that $20 gray puffy jacket and step up the social ladder. The hope of having to work an extra two hours at McDonalds to get it. The hope of watching more MTV to see the latest music video. Rap, punk, emo, metal, alternative, pop, techno, rock, country. The factions in an everlasting modern-day culture war. You’re with us, or you’re against us. We hope for a new car tomorrow, one that’ll be modded and insanely sleek-looking, one that’ll guzzle a gallon a mile to keep taxes sky-high and the clouds all but clean. By hoping for our daily Starbucks coffee, by hoping for a new shirt from Wal-Mart, something is destroyed. We hope for more money, but that means it has to come from somewhere. Kids are working in Columbia to bring you that Starbucks coffee. Kids in Indonesia are making that new shirt in Wal-Mart that’s dirt cheap because the cashier isn’t paid dirt. Some insurance agent is fired in Wisconsin because their web site server cost was increased due to the software company’s latest release price hike since they elected another executive who needed a vacation added to his benefit package. When we hope, we destroy.
See now, this is why going school shopping really ticks me off. Fortunately, my daughter is a jock and prefers those types of clothes (though I have told her no on any shirts that have the “pretend cleavage” where they make a low cut ruffle there to imply…. They put it into almost everything! And no bare tummies or anything else.) My son is a baseball freak. Sometimes it’s hard to find baseball shirts in all the shirt depicting people getting their heads blown off, but they’re there in the back aisle for three times MORE than the bloody shirts. 🙁 Oh, and he likes collared shirts and flannel shirts… kind of scares me. But hey.
I’m strict about the clothes stuff, because a lot of this isn’t appropriate. It’s really depressing what the retailers are doing. I shouldn’t have to hunt for an hour for ONE appropriate shirt for either child, and find hundreds otherwise! Blah.
And I am the mom with the piercings and tattoos. Time/place/age for everything. I told my kids they can when they’re 40.
Kyras last blog post..Scent
I am starting to you like more and more buck.
Tim Appletons last blog post..fair week.
Until they’re 10 or 12, I’ve got one Web site for you. Not cheap, but it’s true-blue kids’ clothes.
http://www.chezami.com
Seriously. Target and Wal-Mart all piss me off. Not only is the stuff not age-appropriate, it’s also flimsy as hell and falls apart. This stuff? Lasts through the season and then-some and is VERY age-appropriate.
Great post, hon.