Look upon the future of clothing and despair

Due to the disintegration of my last pair of attractive pants, today I forced myself to push away my trepidation and go to the mall. I convinced Joslin to come along with me to help, not so much because I don’t know what kind of clothes I like so much as because when it comes to shopping I am clueless. The social space of a mall is almost completely alien to me, and I am utterly incapable of navigating its intricacies without a guide. Let’s be clear that I can purchase like nobody’s business, but purchasing is the act of going into a specific store with the intent of buying a specific object. With shopping, you just arrive at this enormous compound full of goods and services, look around, and say “we’ll see what looks good.” I know the basic category of the thing I’ll eventually purchase — in this case, “pants” — but if asked where such an item might reside or what it might look like, I can only shrug bashfully.

Part of my dislike of malls is due to my unfamiliarity, but in all honesty they make me uncomfortable on many levels. The entire space is an elaborate scheme to suppress rational thought and spur irresponsible buying. Anyone who denies being affected to some extent by this scheme is lying to themselves. Maybe I’m the odd man out in this regard, but entering an area that I know will cause me to lose some control of my actions makes me a little nervous.

Anyway, since the mall isn’t really my thing, I tend to not go very often. As a result, today I was continually amazed by things which had developed in my absence. For example, Abercrombie and Fitch do not stock jeans without holes and tears in them. I knew that the vintage fad had taken the nation’s wealthy youth by storm, but I didn’t realize it had subsumed all other styles in its overwhelming adoption. This is an actual conversation I had with an earnest but unhelpful employee:

Me: Excuse me, do you carry any jeans that don’t have holes in them?

Her: Hrm, I’m not sure. That’s kind of the style now. How about these ones? I think these are about as close as we have.

Me: No, see, those have tears in them.

Her: That? That’s, like, nothing!

Me: No, those are dealbreakers. You don’t have any that look new?

Her: Well, what exactly are you looking for?

Me: I’m looking for jeans that aren’t defective at the time of sale.

I think I may have also muttered something to Joslin to the effect of, “kids these days.” We gave up on the Abercrombie pretty quickly and went to Hollister, an Abercrombie-like store that is apparently very popular with the young folks. While I did find and purchase a pair of jeans that met my exacting standards, I made a far more disturbing discovery related to the vintage fad. Like most clothing stores that cater to teenagers, Hollister is currently offering a line of “vintage” shirts with “funny” or “ironic” slogans on them. I swear to you I’m not making these up:

My name is Duge, Duge Hick.

Cassive Mock

Your mom was here

Fantastic fourplay (looks like Fantastic Four logo)

Double the measure, twice the pleasure

Those are just the ones the guys are supposed to wear. Notice a theme? The girls’ ones had a similar theme — instead of “possesses an enormous penis,” theirs were more like, “I am easy and shallow” (e.g.: “buy me something,” “flirtologist”). I must need to watch more MTV or something, because I had no idea our society had sunk to this level while my back was turned. Given that the median customer age in the store was about 15, I’d guess mommy and daddy are buying many of these shirts for their youngsters, which begs the question: what kind of parent condones this clothing, endorses the celebration of mediocrity and vice masquerading as fashion? I know I sound like a Republican by going on this bent, but I mean come on. It was bad enough when they gave Paris Hilton her own TV show.

Despite the above outrages, I managed to end the current trouser famine without too much difficulty. The new ones had better last, because who know how long it will be before I can steel my courage enough to go back there.