by Julia Bluhm
So you walk down a hall past bunches of kids racing to their next class. You bump into a bunch of Hollister sweatshirts and a couple of Abercrombie tank tops as the posse of “popular kids” parades in a storm of straightened hair and girly giggles. Then, you try to squeeze past some of the other kids in Old Navy,Wal-Mart, and JCPenny clothes…in middle school, you can simply tell what “group” people belong to simply by what they wear.
If you’re not wearing the words “Aero” or “Hollister” across your chest, it seems as though you’re not wealthy, and definitely not popular. Why is this? All the so-called “popular” kids wear these as barcodes that separate them from everybody else. And why is it that if you can’t afford that stuff you feel like you don’t really fit in?
This is just a little of what I’ve noticed in the hallways at the junior high school I go to. It’s kind of like if you’re always wearing brand name clothes, you have a sticky-note on your forehead saying: “I’m rich.” And if you’re wearing something you found at T.J Maxx for ten dollars, it says: “I’m not.” But this isn’t necessarily true. I wonder why can’t we all just wear whatever we want without having to worry about how other people will label us?
“I don’t really think that brand name clothing is a good idea because it just sort of puts a label on your chest and butt, and that’s kind of gross,” said 12-year-old Izzy Labbe. “Also, it kind-of just clones humanity so that everyone’s wearing the same thing and no one’s got individual style.”
So what’s so great about super expensive clothes that basically use their designs as advertising with the store name in huge letters on every t-shirt? And what’s so appealing about a store with black shutters covering all the windows, blasting music, and the smell of some really strong perfume? Well, the stores do all that stuff because they think it will lure in more people, and like any other company, they want to make money with advertising.
Twelve-year-old Lauren Brown says she thinks most of the name brand clothes is often very unoriginal. “If all the clothing says is the name of the store, and it’s just boring and there’s not really a point to it, I think it’s bad,” Brown said.
And the truth is, just because we wear certain brand name clothes doesn’t necessarily make us stuck-up or filthy-rich either. In reality, it doesn’t matter what we wear at all. So why do we all end up judging people inside our heads based on what they wear? (We’ve all have done it at some point, right?) Perhaps all the walking billboards in the hallways can come to a truce and realize that what’s going on inside our heads is not always so ‘popular.’