I can’t believe it took me so long to tackle this topic. It’s been rolling around in my head for awhile. I think I was worried I couldn’t do it justice. There are a bazillion (that’s right, I said ‘bazillion’ and Microsoft Word didn’t underline it in red- so it’s a real word!) different aspects to cover, so this could be really interesting… or lame. I apologize for the ‘hodge-podge’-ness but that’s me trying to get all my thoughts out.
The instigating factor for this is today I had about 10 minutes of downtime with some of my more talkative girls and they totally broke down middle school fashion for me. I’ve incorporated their input with my own observations.
I had the idea of taking pictures of my students and their ‘fashion’ (to offer a true visual representation of course) but there is really no un-creepy way to do that. One of my girls let me take a photo of her hair, but that’s all ya’ll get.
I know middle school is a time of self-discovery; the first time kids are starting to feel independent from their parents. They’re finding out their own identities, their own styles. Those styles encompass a couple of things pretty consistently.
Colored Contacts. These were not around last semester, but it seems during the weeks I’ve been subbing they are suddenly on every eyeball I see. Most kids (like one of my chatty girls) get light blue to offset their dark eyes and make them look oddly distorted. But some guys have gotten weird reflective ones that make their eyes look like a dog’s when you shine a light on them. One guy had majorly freaky ones that blocked all the color from his eye, so it was all white with a pupil. There’s nothing in the dress code about color contacts as far as I can tell. This trend is shared equally between boys and girls.
Of all the fashion trends, I think make-up is the one that echoes my own middle school days the most. The standard for girls is still a raccoon. What a revered creature for young girls. Goal: as much black eyeliner and mascara around one’s eyeballs as much as possible. Combo that with the colored contacts and you’re good to go.
If you want to know a middle schooler’s interests, favorite color, etc- look at their arms. Like a myspace/facebook profile, their arms are covered in everything about them. Popular items include:
- Silly Bandz. These are flimsy little rainbow colored rubber bracelets that pop into any shape imaginable- a flower, dinosaur (that one is coveted- especially if it glows in the dark), a cat, a heart, whatever. They’re dying in popularity, thank goodness. Back in the fall semester, we used to bust kids selling them in the bathroom like drugs.
- “I <3 Boobies.” This is a popular bracelet sold by some organization (I honestly don’t know who) to raise money for breast cancer something-or-other. It’s really wide and thick, made of rubber and comes in every possible color. I’m pretty sure this bracelet was banned for the ‘boobies’ word (ridiculous), but if that’s true no one is enforcing it.
- Then there are a medley of assorted things. Plastic admittance bands from Six Flags, random pieces of string or yarn, the other standard rubber bracelets from any sports brand, and all the possible pseudo-surfer/prep bracelets from the interchangeable American Eagle/PacSun/Holliser/Aeropostale.
Any bare space on an arm is then filled in with doodles. Kids write all the standards; “I love _insert crush of the week_,” their own name, the Superman ‘S’ or just a ton of hearts and squiggles.
Converse are mandatory in middle school. I can have 25 kids in a class and I’ll see 15 different pairs of Chucks. I guess there is a memo when you get here in 6th grade- “Go by Converse… in many colors.” I say kudos to Chuck Taylor for selling all those shoes, though I bet he didn’t envision this is how his namesake would end up. Supplementing Converse are shoe laces. Heaven forbid if you left the shoelaces that came with the shoes in those eyelets. You’d be shunned. Some kids have only one or two pairs of sneakers, but clearly they have at least 10 sets of shoelaces. Glittery, ribbons, every bright color, printed with skulls, polka dots- whatever. Just not white.
Things Middle School “Gangsters” Use to Make Themselves Look…. “Gangster”:
- Anything that would be totally normal for a five year old.
Examples: Sesame Street t-shirts, tiny Barbie or Spongebob backpacks and different colored socks for each foot.
- A pair of jeans or khakis (preferably dickies) that must be worn either slouched under the butt cheeks (to display the power rangers or Corona boxers) or with the pants highly starched and aggressively cuffed above the sneakers.
- Rosaries as necklaces. Actually, these have been flat-out banned at my school because of the gang ties. Sometimes you can still catch a guy with one under his shirt, but the hammers come down pretty hard on rosaries.
- Hair gel. Copious amounts. The two options are complete opposites:
o Spiked up in gravity defying spears that glisten in the florescent light.
o Slicked back flat to the skull in an impenetrable intimidating hair-helmet.
I’ve overwhelmingly noticed hair has become vital to one’s ‘look.’ Apparently with hair- more equals awesome. More, that is, in the timeless style of “emo.” I looked up the definition of the word emo. Emo: overly emotional or melodramatic. I’ve heard it thrown around a lot to describe everything from someone who wears all black, to suicidal tendencies to now- a hairstyle. One of my students happily declared she has ‘perfect emo hair’ and she let me take a picture.
Her hair has no distinguishable part, and most of it is swept forward so it covers her eyes and face. I have no idea what that girl’s forehead looks like. A mandatory aspect of the hairstyle is a useless ponytail that serves no discernable purpose. And of course- dye your hair black or at the very least dark brown- that does without saying.
When I was being enlightened by my female students, I made the dreadful mistake of remarking something was “cool.” The girls all laughed and shared looks. “Miss Martin doesn’t know what ‘cool’ means!” one of them, (I’ll call her… Zettie) declared triumphantly, like she’d exposed I was an alien.
Me: Ok. My bad. So what does ‘cool’ mean now?
Zettie: Alright, I’ll break it down. Cool means: Conservated. Overrated. Overweight. Loser.
Yeah.
You read right.
That’s what cool now stands for.
“A three year old told me that even!” Zettie says to reinforce my stupidity. I told her “conservated” was not a word. I asked her twice how to spell it. We googled it and looked it up in the good ol’ websters, ('conservated' does not exist) and she just declared “Whatevs, it means something to me!” and laughed.
At this point the bell rang and Zettie and her friends swept off to the rest of their day. I was kind of impressed a girl who can’t remember to come to class on time has a four word acronym memorized.
I’m sure my teachers looked at me and my 12 year old peers with the same head-tilted-like-a-dog-who-hears-an-odd-noise expression and tried to understand.
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