After a Fashion

You will almost never see me writing anything about clothes on this blog. By and large, I try to ignore them, buy or wear them only when absolutely necessary, and consider that anyone who judges people by them is shallow and misguided. However. Spring does funny things to a person, and all of a sudden I have, well, at least a couple of things to say about clothes.

First, the use of nylon stockings here in Beijing shocks and horrifies me. I know, fashion is the most ephemeral and relative of arts, and there is no such things as objective beauty and ugliness as far as it is concerned, only this year's rules which were last year's taboos. That being said, there are some things that my eye finds terrifically ugly. It started with the first warm days, when I was already wearing t-shirts and sandals. Beijing gals were still wearing their long underwear, but they did start wearing skirts and dress shoes. And nylon stockings over their long underwear, so the bottom of the long underwear showed--under the nylon. Without the nylons I might be into it as a sort of funky look, but with the stockings it just makes me cringe.

Now that the days are much hotter, everyone has finally left off with the long underwear. But now there comes a new peculiarity: ladies wearing ankle-high nylon stockings with knee-length skirts. We're not talking stockings with special patterns and lacy tops or anything, which would still be iffy but at least defensible. This is just plain old nylons, with their tops very plainly visible. Presumably the rationale is that it's too hot to wear full stockings (I concur). But I guess they just don't want to put their bare feet into dress shoes. It would be pragmatic, except for that if you were really pragmatic, you'd be like me and wear pants or cheap sandals that can handle your bare feet. I'm just saying, whatever effect gals are trying to produce by wearing short skirts and fancy shoes is totally ruined (at least for me) by the ugly sight of their nylon stocking rims at ankle or mid-calf height--you know?

Or am I just being old-fashioned? Is this a new look that has oozed into the world fashion scene while I wasn't looking? I'm sorry I don't have any pictures by the way. Every time I see it, I am too shocked and horrified to remember to pull out my camera.

Okay, second--weird t-shirt slogans in English. Now I suppose it's possible that Chinese people seeing the way Americans use Chinese characters on their t-shirts and tattoos might have a similarly startled reaction. I once saw an American girl with the character "dry' tattooed prominently on her shoulder. Huh? After a lot of thought, I finally remembered that there's a rarely-used variant pronunciation of the character which means "heaven" in the Classic of Changes scheme, and since that stuff is more well known to Americans than, say, the Chinese word for dry-cleaning, the presumably that's what she meant. But the first thing that I think would come to a Chinese person's mind would be... "dry."

That being said, two wrongs don't make a right. The other day, I saw a girl walking down the street, a cute girl in a cute oversized top with a picture of the cute happy little dog in the corner and next to the dog it said in large letters, "Living is the best revenge." Huh? What? The translation part of my brain twists and squirms, trying to figure out what kind of Chinese translation would make that seem like a good thing to have on your t-shirt--but I'm afraid I'm drawing a blank. There are many many examples of things like this, of course, but that doesn't make it any better!

Finally, I have to confess that I am in love with the Suicide Girls fashion icon, Zoetica--and I mean that in the absolute most shallow and ridiculous way: I love the way she dresses. After poring over all of her weekly columns I concluded that if I could choose to look like someone, it would be her hands down. Now that is a bad thing, because she spends far far more time, money, and thought on her "look" than ever I could. Furthermore although we are actually the same height (5'4", and I find it endearing that she is so short), I probably outweigh her by a good forty pounds, and can't see myself pulling off the sort of things she tends to wear. But I can't help it, adoration is irrational.

Actually, I don't like (at all) the super-cutesy girly barbie-doll aspects of her style, but more the tougher tom-boyish side (see also). But still, it's bad enough. The reasonably sane part of my brain bemoans how far I have sunk (god, I'm even confessing it all to the world) and hopes it is just a phrase. But if y'all see me traipsing around in Chicago next fall in big socks and short skirts that just make my big ass look bigger, well, blame Zoetica.

By the way, adolescent crushes aside, Suicide Girls is rapidly becoming my favorite news source. (National Geographic is up there too--funny combination.) Although I ignore almost all the music news 'cause it's just not my thing. Still, the rest is fun and irreverent, with enough anger and bitterness to be interesting, but not so much that it's tiresome.