SIKE! article

I wrote the following article for the forthcoming, Gainesville, FL-based SIKE! magazine (expected publication 9/2009).

“I grow old…I grow old…

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”

--T. S. Eliot

“…they’ll do anything if someone cool do it,

but they won't do it first…”

--The Cool Kids

Why so many Gainesville social divisions demarcated with elements of physical appearance? I would hate to delve even inches into any serious discussion of sociology here, so if you’re a social scientist—won’t you turn the page? Perhaps bars and restaurants downtown have started enforcing a wildly strict social dress code: Did everyone drinking agua fresca outside of Volta ride there on a fixie? Are all the hookah-smoking guys at Sharab wearing brightly colored, well-ironed, half-buttoned club shirts? Have all the Guinness drinkers at Durty Nelly’s smoked a pack of cigarettes on the way from their cars to the pub’s door?

Certainly no! Actually, those establishments do a fantastically efficient job of cultivating diversity within their clientele. But how can I explain the enormous amount of money I just won by observing only what clothes people were wearing downtown and then betting on where they were going to get a drink? (I’m sorry; it was me who was following you.) These are just humble observations; placing blame is not the point here (were you expecting a point to this article anyway?). Somewhere within our community’s social constructs lurk influential centers that determine, for example, that it is okay to convert an old Giant road bike into a fixed gear, but it is not okay to order one online from Urban Outfitters. I get the impression that groups either become jealous of their “unique” style and, in an effort to keep it safe, render exclusionary meaning or perceived depth to a trend (e.g., I grease my rockabilly pompadour with a the same brand of pomade that Gene Vincent used, so you Wal-Mart hair-gelers are losers), or maybe there are some older (or just more influential) members of society who act outside of the temptation to blend in with peers and are free from aspirations to attain a fashion-based social status. Perhaps it is these individuals who are lifted as examples by others seeking acceptance or membership. (Wow, when did this article turn into an anthropology graduate seminar?) I’m just guessing here; of course, I don’t have the answer, and to quote everyone’s favorite absurdist playwright, “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”

What, I think, would be more beneficial for everyone involved is a far-reaching, communal handshake/hug of agreement that it’s a waste of time for us to be obsessed about defining someone’s personhood by what he or she wears, where his or her bike was purchased, etc. In the same way, please don’t seek to be defined by how awesome your hair looks, how your tattoo peeks-out just perfectly from underneath a rolled shirtsleeve, how you were listening to Passion Pit in middle school way before your friends were, or how you read only the coolest zines in Gainesville.