The Gap is stoopid

So yeah, I’m going to rant about the stupidity of the teeny-bopper generation… I was at the Columbia Mall three times today, for various reasons, but I only shopped for clothes the first time. I bought a pair of khaki pants at JC Penney for $15 (on sale…w00t…)…which was a great deal, of course…but they all had this rip along the left ankle cuff of the pant leg. Now…I looked at another of the same type of pants…had a rip in the same place… I tried another…same place… I even looked at American Eagle at similar pants…they all had a small rip right below the left-hand pocket. All of them.

Now, this brings up a few points… First of all, aren’t these pants supposed to be “cool” because they look more worn? Well…wouldn’t they look more authentic if the rips and tears were at more randomized locations? Is it really that difficult to accomplish? How is it a “style” thing if they’re all the same? Is anyone “cool” if everyone wears the same style? I thought the whole point of being “cool” was to be different, yet if you wear the same clothes as everyone else, then you are the same as everyone else, therefore, not allowing for the capacity to be “cool.” It all seems counter-productive.

The more important point, however, is how absolutely stupid the American consumer is. We, the consumers, listen to what we are told looks good. If someone told us 20 years ago that, “hey, wearing pants with holes all over them looks cool,” we’d say, “damn, you’re stupid.” Now, though, Tommy Hilfiger tells us it’s cool…so everyone should wear clothes that have holes. We, the American consumer, have been told by Cosmo and Seventeen and GQ what looks good…and we believed it…and now we buy our clothes, etc. based on their “recommendations”…when these “recommendations” are surely “suggested” by every name-brand retailer and clothing designer in the world. And how are we propagating this? By shopping at Abercrombie and Gap Kids. Let’s have our kids wear their clothes from Day One…then, when they’re old enough to complain about clothes from Target saying that they’re not “cool” enough…since “cool” can only be found at Gap and Abercrombie…

Our culture is entirely programmable by commercials, TV, and celebrity (and this all explains why the hell over 50% of our country voted for quite possibly the dumbest person ever to walk the earth in the last election). We have no minds of our own, no individuality, and cannot think for ourselves. We have to look to our neighbor to see what is acceptable in the eyes of everyone else. Those who get tattoos and piercings try to evade our consumer culture by going against the grain of everyone else, and yet they have even formed their own groups who shop at certain stores and buy certain things like everyone else they know… No one is safe.

Indeed, humans are social creatures who like to fit into the crowd…but that doesn’t mean we have to be lemmings…

P.S. Happy Birthday to me… 😛