A Familiar Feeling
Classes have officially started, which means that the traditional students are back on campus. When I was at the University of Maryland taking my science prerequisites, I was amazed at the changes in campus culture since I had been a co-ed in the mid-90's:
Instead of little or no make-up, flannel shirts, jeans and hiking boots, young women now wore lots of make-up, form-fitting, navel-showing shirts, low-slung pants or short skirts and heals. (It always seemed to me that professors would get quite an eye-full in a lecture hall filled with such young beauties.)
Few had backpacks--many had leather bags that I would use as a purse or a bag that I could use to take all my stuff to work.
I felt like an old prude. I wore a backpack (on both shoulders!), was married, had a mortgage, and rode public transportation an hour each way to class. I preferred indie rock to Britney Spears.
Granted, some of these differences may have been geographic--I spent my undergrad years at a liberal women's college in New England, with a stint at a Big 10 school in the Midwest. Neither being a place that was really warm enough for showing off midruffs. But I digress.
For the most part, my cohort of 2nd Degreers is much like me--people who have decided to change careers and are back in school. We wear jeans or outfits suitable for work, we wear backpacks and have the beginnings of crow's feet, laugh lines and the occaisional grey hair. While the traditional students are less Britney Spears-influenced, many still fit the description above.
Thank god I have friends this time around!
7 comments:
It turns out that fashion thing is definitely decade-based... it's cold as all get out here and it's still the land of heels and midriffs and lots of makeup. (Not so much with the grad students though.) We hit undergrad in grunge land, so t-shirts the size of tents, flannels, and hiking boots were perfect.
You may be right that professors get "an eye-full," but remember that not all body types were meant to be in form-fitting shirts and low-slung pants. That is to say, it might not be the eye-full they want.
I totally agree that some of the clothing issues are generational, but there are diffferences even between UMd and Georgetown, which I think is interesting.
Isn't it great to be a part of the grunge/gen-x era?
dl004d and I disagree on the macrosocial effect of nubile women dressing in a borderline sleazy fashion.
He says that it produces a negative byproduct whereby unattractive and/or obese people take their cue from these trendsetters and dress similarly, despite the fact that the overall effect of skimpy clothing on these people is visually repugnant. dl004d says that, in turn, attractive people will reject these skimpy fashions -- either out of a sense of moral responsibility, or to avoid being associated with these homely fatties.
Conversely, I say that unattractive people dressing in skimpy clothing actually forces the good-looking women to dress MORE skimpily, since the stakes are being raised higher. The attractive women will try to "one-up" the unattractive women by going further in their sartorial derring-do. No matter how skankily an unattractive woman dresses, there will always be parts she is reluctant to highlight or expose. The attractive women will seize on these insecurities and showcase them, so as to reestablish the upper hand of stylishness.
But that's just my opinion.
If there has been one constant throughout time, it's that attractive people look attractive no matter what they're wearing. There's no stopping them.
I'll tell you one thing about good-looking people -- We're not well-liked.
Are any of those friends hot young navel-barers?
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