Authors: Beth J. Harpaz
“Oh, you're Taz's mom?” he said, nodding knowingly. “He's cool.”
He's cool? MY son is cool? A GROWN- UP thinks my son is cool? I was a lot of things when I was an adolescent, but I was not cool. But if my son is cool, does that make me just a little bit cool? There was something vicariously thrilling about being the mother of a Cool Boy.
And amid all the neurotic maternal anxieties I harbored about the path his life would take over the next ten years— that he wouldn't get good enough grades, that he didn't take school seriously enough, that he might not get into a good college, that he might not get a good job, that he'd end up living back home at the age of twenty- three with me doing his laundry— I comforted myself with the thought that at least I'd never have to worry that he was a dweeb.
But all of this left me feeling a little useless. As parents, our jobs include feeding, clothing, and housing our children until they are old enough to earn money to pay for these things themselves. You assume you are the middleman between your child's needs as a consumer and the marketplace's need to sell. But what good am I, when not only am I unnecessary as the intermediary, but, in the case of the sneakers, my very physical presence prevents my child from getting the object he desires?
Not only is Taz better off shopping without me because he knows what's cool and I don't, but my being there with him in the store increases the price to the point where he can't afford it. And I'm only marginally useful as a means for paying the bills, because I'm not willing to ante up what Taz thinks is a reasonable amount of money for what he wants.
On the other hand, I have to admit that those expensive sneakers really are better made than the $20 ones I used to buy. It doesn't hurt that Taz takes good care of them, wiping the dirt off and rubbing them tenderly
with sneaker cleaners and leather conditioners, spraying them with waterproofing, and even storing them in their original box. I should point out here that he is far more interested in cleaning his sneakers than he is in say cleaning his room, or even brushing his teeth.
It was different when Taz was little— and far less expensive. From pretty much the time he was born through much of elementary school, I dressed Taz in hand- me- downs. Eventually, he started to notice that an awful lot of his clothes had other people's names written in laundry marker on the labels. I can honestly say it must have been second or third grade before I took the poor kid clothes shopping, we had so many castoffs from friends and relatives in the closet.
Finally, Taz realized there was a whole world of apparel that was brand- new (not used), brightly colored (not faded), sized to fit (not whatever his cousins or neighbors had outgrown), and in style right now (not three years ago). From that point on, he pretty much refused to wear secondhand clothes. It was too thrilling to be able to go to a store and pick out exactly what he wanted.
But exactly what he wanted always seemed totally bizarre to me. Boxers and big sneakers were only part of the Look. He also liked shirts that were eight or nine sizes too big, gold chains, and, of course, pants so baggy they were falling off his butt (the better to show off his boxers).
The sneakers, by the way, were best left untied, to make it look like you just got out of prison, where they take your laces away so you won't hang yourself. My husband is a Legal Aid lawyer— who often represents inmates at Rikers Island, the city jail, and it's a little disturbing to consider how well our son fits in with his father's clients.
In addition to the overall gangsta rap look, there have also been occasional one- outfit wonders. Take the red-and- black velour track suit.
“What are you, a soccer mom?” I said incredulously when he picked out the jacket and matching pants with elasticized waistband.
But he was resolute: “That's the style, Mom!”
One of my neighbors laughed. “He looks like a Pilates instructor!” she said.
Damned if P. Diddy wasn't wearing the exact thing next time I saw him on TV. Within a few days, every kid we knew either had the same outfit or wished he had the same outfit.
Then Taz picked out an oversized white T- shirt with a picture of Wile E. Coyote on it, decorated with silver sparkles.
“Won't some big dude make fun of you for wearing that and squash your head like a cantaloupe?” I said. “It looks like the kind of thing a little girl wears to a birthday party.”
“Don't worry about it,” he said nonchalantly, making
it clear that my opinion was irrelevant rather than insulting. “It's hot.”
The next day I was heading into work on the train and I saw two big muscled, tattooed, and otherwise scary- looking guys sitting across from me, taking up three or four seats apiece. Although the train was crowded and standing-room only, no one dared say, “Excuse me, would you mind moving over so other people could sit down?” I realized both of these guys, who looked like they had just been released from prison, were wearing familiar- looking T- shirts. One had a picture of Bugs Bunny, the other Daffy Duck. Both shirts were decorated with silver sparkles, and they glinted in the train's fluorescent lights each time I turned my head.
Score another coup for my fashionable thirteen-year-old.
I work in a newsroom, and I sit near the fashion editor. I mentioned the cartoon characters festooned with sparkles to her and she confirmed that Looney Tunes are big. Apparently, this was old news, and I just wasn't paying attention. But how did Taz know about it before anybody else? It's not like he reads
Women's Wear Daily.
It's like this stuff comes to him in a dream.
One of his most persistent visions involved the North Face brand. He and his brother begged me for North Face jackets winter after winter, but I just couldn't see paying hundreds of dollars for outerwear
that's designed to withstand polar cold when our worst winter weather rarely dips below twenty degrees.
Finally, we happened to come upon a North Face outlet while we were visiting Freeport, Maine, which is famous for its outlet stores. Since the jackets were all under a hundred bucks and both boys had outgrown their coats from the previous year, I agreed to buy them big black puffy parkas with hoods trimmed in fake gray fur.
Soon after I made these purchases, I mentioned them to a colleague who lives in the Northwest. He started laughing uproariously and said that North Face is aimed at trekkers and outdoor types, not urban kids.
But he was wrong. A few months later, on the first cold day that year, every single person I saw— young, old, fat, thin, black, white, male, female— was wearing a North Face jacket, except for me.
It was like I'd stepped into an alternate universe or a science fiction movie masquerading as an ad for North Face. I was in a hall of North Face mirrors, or a crazy dream. No matter which way I turned— in elevators, on street corners, waiting on line at the drugstore— there was the logo: THE NORTH FACE in all caps, next to three curved white stripes designed to evoke the cold mountaintops that wearing the brand will prepare you to climb. I was surrounded. Suddenly, I felt cold, very cold, in my sheepskin coat and woolen scarf.
That night, the temperature plunged. I had to walk
the dog before I could go to bed. It was chilly in our apartment, and I really didn't feel like making myself even more miserable by going outside. My sheepskin coat was OK, but to stay warm outside on a night like this, I needed to layer a sweater underneath, and wrap a scarf around my head, and I'd still get chilled. Meanwhile, the dog was giving me her Sad- Eyed Lady of the Lowlands look. I sighed and got up to find my boots.
Then I saw Taz's North Face hanging on a hook by the front door. He was in his room, doing his homework. I slipped the jacket on, zipped it up, and put the leash on the dog. Quietly, I opened and shut the door, gave the dog her pre- bedtime stroll, and discreetly returned to the apartment. As I unzipped the jacket, Taz came out of his room.
“I didn't say you could borrow that,” he said.
“I paid for it,” I said defensively. “My money, my coat. And I only wore it around the block to walk the dog. Besides, I was cold. And it's really warm.”
He smiled. “You shoulda bought one for you when we were in that store,” he said.
“I shoulda,” I conceded. “Shoulda, woulda, coulda— didn't.” (I once heard Hillary Clinton say that in response to some accusation, and I've found it comes in very handy as a way to explain a great deal of human behavior.)
You've probably figured out by now that I'm the type of person who doesn't buy new clothes to stay in style. I buy new clothes when my old ones are so worn out that
I'm almost embarrassed to donate them to the Salvation Army.
It's not that I don't want to spend the money on new clothes, although, I admit, I am a cheapskate. It's just the way I— and lots of people I know— were brought up. I've only had three winter coats in the last thirty years, and I plan to get a lot more years out of the one I have now before I get another one. (And if I can keep sneaking Taz's North Face instead of wearing mine, I'll get even more years out of that sheepskin.)
Besides, I know what would happen if I were to buy a North Face jacket. They would immediately go out of style. My purchase would have the opposite effect of my son's. Instead of everyone suddenly starting to wear what I'm wearing, they would immediately abandon what I'm wearing. And then I'd have to get new coats for Taz and Sport in whatever Taz deemed the next big style to be.
Now granted, not every thirteen- year- old lives in New York City, where you can pick up the latest fashion trends just by standing on a street corner for fifteen minutes and watching trendy people go by. (Of course, this does not explain why these trends are invisible to me, but irresistible to Taz.)
But chances are, even if you live in a small town or a leafy suburb in some other part of the country, your kid is still way trendier than you will ever be. That's because starting at around age thirteen, kids become part of
something I have come to regard as the Global Youth Style Conspiracy.
No one has to tell members of the GYSC what the styles are. They just know. Why do bare- legged girls wear boots in the summer? Why do boys wear hats indoors and short sleeves in winter? You can't know the answers to those questions if you are a parent, because parents are not part of the GYSC.
But I have concluded that the slightest differences in logos, necklines, and waistbands are part of an intricate GYSC code, a way that kids send signals to each other. These signals mark them as members of various tribes— nerds, jocks, thugs, preppies, slackers, freaks. And while the differences in style may seem small— sometimes even undetectable— to you, to members of the GYSC, those subtle tribal markings are as strict as uniforms.
To help me flesh out my theory on the GYSC, I consulted with some friends around the country on what their teens were wearing. An acquaintance in North Carolina asked his daughter Miana and her friend Katie what's popular with, as he put it, “their ilk,” and a few moments later he forwarded me this e- mail: “Daddy, why are my friends ‘ilk’? My friends aren't ilk, they're freaks. We wear tanks, Rainbows, camis, jean shorts, Bermudas, Hollister is big, label stores mostly, skater shoes (i.e. Vans, etnies, things like that), ripped things (shorts, jeans, khakis), messy buns for hair, side bangs as well, hair bands around the wrist; for safe keeping ya
know, and that's pretty much it. We layer, it's all the rage. We also wear a lot of hoodies and zip- ups. Ta da, your window into teenage girl- dom/fashion. Don't forget the short, preppy mini skirts that the sluts wear. Yeah, I said sluts. Ha. Don't tell Mommy.”
It took me about a half hour, using my trusty translator Google, to decipher her message. And in case you're as out of it as I am, allow me to enlighten you: Rainbows are flip- flops; Hollister is a brand that sells rather normal- looking clothes like T- shirts and jeans (even though all of the clothing pictured on its website is inexplicably scrunched up and wrinkled, as if it had been left in the dryer too long), and skater shoes are sneakers for skateboarders, with thick rubber soles, air pockets in the heel, and occasional wild print designs.
On to the next glimpse of adolescent cool. “My boy likes to dress like a stoner,” a friend in a New England college town e- mailed me, “but with oversized pants (he likes these made of hemp) and boxers showing. The T- shirts are all of our old friends, the Dead, Jimi Hen-drix, Bob Marley, The Who, etc. The hair is long or shaved all the way off, the sneakers are huge and not tied. No visible socks. A Hacky Sack or skateboard is usually attached in some way.”
Not sure what a Hacky Sack is? Me neither. Again, I had to look that one up on Google. I think the easiest way to explain it is to compare it to the beanbags I used to play with as a kid. My mother used to sew them by the dozen with leftover scraps of fabric, and, yes, she
actually filled them with dried beans or seeds. (I suppose that sounds like something out of
Little House on the Prairie,
but actually it happened in the 1960s in New York.)
Well, now they sell little beanbaggy thingies for about $13 (I guess no one's mother sews toys from scraps of fabric anymore) and they are called Hacky Sacks. (I guess it wouldn't be cool to call them beanbags.) The biggest difference is, you don't catch or throw them with your hands; you kick them and do all kinds of other fancy footwork to keep them aloft. The game is actually called “footbag” and sometimes kids stand around in a circle playing it.
Next I called on a friend in Spokane, Washington, who has three boys, to get his take on local styles. He said the oldest has “long cultivated a type of gangsta look, with the sideways fitted baseball cap, wild pattern T- shirts, really baggy shorts and pants and the tops of his boxer shorts showing.” Sound familiar?
His middle son wears a lot of Nike- label clothes, listens to hip- hop stations, and talks like a rapper. The youngest of the guys is into “basketball and football jerseys with baggy mesh shorts that have lots of holes and are three sizes too big.”
I'm considering asking this family if they'd care to adopt a fourth son, because clearly Taz could move to Spokane tomorrow and fit right in.