Where’s the college?
“Where are the shirts with holes in them? And the guy with the obnoxiously long hair … where’s he?” my friend Sean asked me on a visit as I paraded around our tree-lined campus, pointing out this historic building and that important landmark.
You see, Sean is from a distant and magical land called College Station. They have a university there – a pretty big one. And in this fantastical fantasy place there are those who say strangely dressed creatures roam, wild and dangerous beasts who care not how frequently their clothes are laundered. They are called “college students,” and they maneuver just beyond the mainstream tide.
Where are the holey shirts, indeed? Where are the crazy hippie flower children and the black eyeliner league? Where are the bemohawked musicians and the brilliant geeky computer science faction? Where are the inexplicably baggy pants and the creepy pale kids? Where are the disgruntled feminists with shaved heads? Where have all the grunge boys gone?
Our disquietingly well-manicured landscape (worth every $10,000 student loan debt!) here at SMU is matched by equally well-manicured student attire, it seems.
Our collegiate palette is a sea of khaki, gray, white and denim, dotted with candy-colored greek jerseys proudly proclaiming clone status. The first week or three of fall semester is always nice for us people watchers, when the first-years have arrived at what they think will be a real, normal American college, where people have dredlocks and big goofy tattoos and torn anarchy-promoting T-shirts. So the uninitiated don crazy dyed streaks in their hair and alternative piercings and profane witticisms pinned to their book satchels. It usually takes them at least a little while to figure out that they can’t walk around in an Abercrombie commercial dressed like a Green Peace ad. Then they either trade in their shiny boots for a nice sensible pair of flip-flops or leave.
So why does our microcosm on a hilltop have to look more like a country club than an institute of higher learning? My fellow Mustangs, there is more to wardrobial life than faded T-shirts advertising some banal party at which you puked on your shoes. Just because you’re a millionaire WASP Republican, does this mean you can’t leave the house wearing something wacky once in your life? Now’s the time to do it, folks. You have the rest of your lives to wear Anne Klein and J. Crew. This is the only time in your adult existence that you can get away with wearing the Salvation Army’s spring collection in the middle of October. So you might not look like the rest of the Tri Delts, so what? It won’t kill you to wrap something that clashes around your head just for a little while. What this campus needs is a little less Dave Matthews, and a little more Liz Phair. Call it therapeutic nonconformity – because subdued clothing is a disconcerting symptom of a subdued brain.
I know you were raised to despise anything radical, but maybe you could give it a shot, just for the hell of it. You’re young, the world is your vegan fake-shellfish product. You have explicit permission from society to be a hopeless raging idealist, an angry subversive loudmouth, an irreverent sarcastic futurist. But take heed! This permission is ultimately and permanently revocable. Soon, very soon, you will find yourself swirling through the wormhole of corporate America, and you will come out on the other side in a strange galaxy where you’ll have kids and a large desk and a maid and then it will be too late!
Once you’re there, all the ironed Polo shirts in the world can’t save you any more. Which story do you want to tell? The one about the time you turned the sacred Dedman fountain into purple Jello to protest a war*, or the time you accidentally went to class wearing the wrong color watch but heroically passed your contemporary marketing test anyway? If you can’t engage in some healthy rebellion, if you can’t irk the older generation with your blind optimism and noble indignation, then what good are you? If you’ve become so inebriated on your own apathy that you don’t have the guts to make yourself and others uncomfortable with a pernicious status quo, then any hope of your life ever approaching anything resembling meaning or balance is lost. You are effectively useless to the world. But then, some people are OK with that, and that’s fine.
I know there’s something lurking in the back of your closet that you’ve always secretly wanted to wear, but you’re afraid your friends will laugh at you. I say you should wear it anyway. College is the place where you try on things – clothes, ideas, people, friends, activities. It’s not the place where you come with your identity etched in titanium and refuse to tamper with your ideals. That’s a waste of a huge, beautiful resource where you can learn almost anything about almost anything.
Go learn to kick a hackey sack. Put the hair gel and makeup away for a second and go to class in your pajamas (bathrobe and fluffy bunny slippers optional). Take a nap in the grass on a sunny afternoon, even though you just took a shower. Try thinking something that your parents always told you you shouldn’t think.
Leave the house in that hat that someone gave you as a joke one year. Ask yourself whether it’s really that cool to go to class in high heels. See how it feels. It might scare you, but that’s what you’re here for. There are people out there who are more interested in building a scale model of the Simpsons’ Springfield than their resumes. There are people out there who start break dancing clubs. There are people out there who can show you a side of life that you would never have even thought to look for. Be friendly to someone who doesn’t look like you today (if you can find such a person to begin with). It just might change your life. And your boring clothes.
* – I do not encourage, condone, or approve of such abhorrent vandalism, and I renounce any and all responsibility should it ever take place. I was just making a point.
