COLUMN: Female fashion is nonsensical
Women’s fashion has really gone down the tubes. One of the worst haute couture faux pas of late is the creation of these boots called Uggs.
Whether you’re part of the 5 percent who wear real Uggs or the 95 percent who wear the Payless knock-off versions, those boots are ugly. Wearing them with sweatpants tucked into them makes you look like you just walked off a shooting of the “Simple Life” with Nicole Richie.
Enough about Uggs, though. They suck, and I know they’re not going away. I’ve actually thought about buying some and wearing them just to protest how stupid they look. I don’t care if they’re comfy. They’re just an invention some woman with cankles dreamed up so she wouldn’t have to look at her calf-ankles all the time. Why don’t you just start walking around in firefighter’s turnouts?
Love me or hate me, I have a lot to say about female fashion, and from the looks of things, I’m worried about the future.
In a recent Salt Lake Tribune snippet, I read, according to some poll, Salt Lake and Utah counties were voted the worst-dressed places in America. No surprise — and since the majority of this state is essentially made up of the same kind of person when it comes to fashion, I’m going to go out on a limb and group Cache County with those valleys to the south.
This must be said before I go on. I love women — especially well-dressed, beautiful women. But a few years ago, everything I held dear regarding women’s clothing went out the window. I’ll be the first man to say women are all that and they deserve to be free. Women should be able to wear whatever they want; but, ladies, you should also have the tact to know what you look good in and what makes you look like a drunken sixth grader who got locked in the mall on her birthday.
Besides, men look bad enough on a regular basis. Let the guys make fools of themselves in skinny jeans, while you give your skinny jeans to the emaciated mannequin in the display at Hollister. Speaking of that store, any place that is lit like a seedy afterhours club and plays techno music so loud you can’t hear your friend saying, “Oh, no way, girl. Put that back, it makes you look like a two-legged buffalo with a skin condition,” is not a good place to buy clothing.
Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of women look in the mirror enough after they get dressed. And really, the root of the problem begins in the dressing room at the clothing store. Women need to be more honest with their friends. Please explain to your girlfriends the mechanics of wearing skinny jeans with round hips, short legs and ankle boots — you will look goofy; and it’ll hurt to walk.
I don’t know if women do this to each other just because they’re conniving saboteurs who do whatever it takes to make sure their friends don’t look better than they do, or if the fashion world really has just taken a giant crap. I’ve decided magazines are not good ways to get ideas for how to look and dress. They promote eating disorders and convince women that they should all look the same.
First, this is impossible, and, second, stop letting yourself get conned into buying ugly clothes just because people perpetuating superficial gender ideals lie to you about what looks good.
Please stop dressing according to what some semi-pornographic magazine tells you and, for goodness’ sake, please stop wearing leggings with your butt sticking out for the whole world to see.
One out of 100 women actually look good in them, and really the only people who should be able to see that much of your body’s contour are your partner and your doctor — maybe wearing them at the gym is passable, but even then there are alternatives.
I have so much more to say, but I’ll have to wrap things up. Maybe I’ll write a follow-up to this column. The last thing I want to address is the boot pandemic. Boots have been around forever, so it’s natural that cobblers and shoemakers have come up with just about every kind of obnoxious tassel, zipper, pom-pom, lace, button, rivet, fringe, flap, heel and toe style there is to super glue onto a cheap, pleather pair of Canal Street knockoffs.
Of the eleventy-million styles out there, about seven of them make the right wearer look good. Then there’s all the rest, including, but not limited to: Boots that look like old sweater sleeves that you wrapped around your calf and then buttoned to it; boots that look like 1970s couch upholstery that you wrapped around your ankle and tied to your calf; boots that actually just look like you shoved your feet into oven mitts; boots that look like something an Eskimo porn-star might wear — I also call these snow-hooker boots; and boots that clearly won’t accept the large amount of jeans you’re trying to stuff into them, which results in an awkward situation in which it appears your jeans pooped a boot.
And now, ladies, we’re wearing boots up to and above our knees on regular old, casual romp-around-in-the-snow-on-campus kind of days — and we have to make sure we go to the really-big-sock store and buy socks that will fit over our jeans and stick out over the tops of our boots. This look is sometimes cute, when done right, but usually it just ends up like most fads — fashion train wrecks.
Here’s a rule of thumb, my friends: If what you’re wearing either looks and feels too comfortable or too uncomfortable, chances are you need to walk back inside that dressing room or that closet and put on something that looks good. What happened to flared jeans, a pair of flats and a cute-but-simple top? Or is that look just too easy to pull off?
— D. Whitney Smith is copy editor for The Utah Statesman. He is majoring in print journalism and sociology. Comments on this column can be sent to statesmanoffice@aggiemail.usu.edu