What Not to Wear II

Most of the time when I'm walking around campus I'm fairly oblivious to my surroundings. I'm running through my next lecture or regretting things said in my last one or steeling myself for a committee meeting or wondering if it's too early to go home and go to bed. But every once in awhile I come out of my head and notice what the undergrads are wearing.

With the guys, nothing ever changes. The black guys wear impossibly huge tee shirts and immensely oversized shorts buckled below their butt cheeks so they have to walk like penguins. Most of the white guys wear nondescript loose-cut jeans and baseball caps. Only the white guys with multiple piercings and tattoos seem to have evolving fashion sensibilities. They used to sport skateboarder-inspired baggy cargo pants; now they wear skinny jeans turned up to showcase the latest stud or ink.

The tides of female undergrad fashions, in contrast, ebb and flow with regularity. For awhile it was men's boxer shorts--coming into the classroom was like crashing a slumber party. Long long ago, when I first began teaching, big bright bows perched atop the vast majority of female heads. A large lecture hall resembled a butterfly atrium.

The latest female fashion craze on campus consists of Ugg boots, bare legs, and athletic shorts (the cotton kind with white piping around the bottom). On Friday, as I watched a number of young women dressed in various versions of this extraordinary outfit, I contemplated ways to explain to them the concept of winter footwear and and to point them toward the clothing that should accompany it.

But on Saturday 14-year-old Hugh and I went to the Mardi Gras parade downtown. It was unusually cold for Baton Rouge, with an icy wind whipping off the river. I had on a coat, scarf, hat, gloves,and boots, but still had to jump around to keep warm. Luckily the folks next to us had one of those nifty coolers that doubles as a portable stereo, and they were playing classic Mardi Gras tunes. So I'm kinda stomping to the beat, waiting for the parade, and I look up and there's Hugh, watching me and laughing. When I asked him what he was laughing at, he replied, "A bundled-up old lady, bopping up and down."

A bundled-up old lady, bopping up and down.

So much for serving as campus fashion consultant.