The absurdity of our preoccupation with fashion

FASHION AND THE fashionable are more often than not bizarre. It goes almost without saying, so I’m not quite sure why I even bothered saying it.

Some people may call knee-high satin boots hideous, and others might declare acid-washed khakis a just plain stupid idea, but that’s their opinion.

I usually don’t mind stupid-looking clothes. I figure that I’m not the one who’s going to be embarrassed by the dog tags and spiked bracelets you’re wearing.

I would just prefer to laugh at you.

But sunglasses today are really just too much. I actually don’t mind looking at the wide, square-ish sunglasses that make the wearer look like a Top Gun fighter pilot — even the guy that dies at the end of the movie — or those small, boxy shades reminiscent of every cyberpunk anime villain ever.

Some people balk at those wide frame snowboarding glasses, but I’m open-minded about them.

Moreover, if you purchase a pair of Oakley-style shades, for some unknown reason, I figure you’re too rich to care what anyone else thinks.

I personally think that buying any pair of glasses for more than a dollar is just plain silly — I just end up sitting on and breaking my new pair within the first month or two, without exception — but that’s a decision people just have to make on their own.

Just think of me the next time you buy yourself a condo in Miami.

What really bothers me are sunglasses that are just plain big. Like huge big. The glasses that reach from the eyebrow to the cheekbone, from one side of the face to the other.

I can only approximate the bigness of these big, big glasses through redundantly restating their bigitude, and still my estimation is only to scale.

Big.

I almost feel embarrassed whenever I see some people — generally women — walking around with glasses so overcome with largeosity that they both begin to affect the tides.

Is the sun really so harsh that you need glasses the size of St. Peter’s Square to defend yourself from ultraviolet radiation? Isn’t that a little extravagant?

I say that if your name is not both Kennedy and Onassis, you have no business walking around with that monstrosity over your face.

The only reason she got away with it was because she was the president’s wife, and then only for a couple years. Then she was the dead president’s wife, so people avoided noticing that sort of thing.

I hate to generalize, but the sorts of people that wear these sunglasses are often just as bad.

There are exceptions to every stereotype, but, as Jeff Foxworthy never fails to demonstrate by virtue of his continued popularity, there are never many.

The people that wear the large glasses, those defenders against the tyranny of the sun, wear their eyebrow-blemish concealers for one reason. That reason is style.

What little style the sunglasses provide is severely diminished, if not negated, by their popularity.

What sort of unique, interesting style can you have if yours is the same as so many other people?

But that, my friends, my readers, and my class ignorers, is where cold, hard logic halts my argument dead in its tracks. As I ponder style further, I realize that it is just too important to be taken lightly.

The elements of style are manifold, and I think noted fashion designers Strunk and White would agree. At least, I think they’re fashion designers. They even wrote the book on elements of style.

It is the one thing that humanity has that is constant and immutable, aesthetic and anamorphic. Of course, it is none of these things, but that sure sounds good, doesn’t it?

That fashion is always changing makes it always interesting, newsworthy, and ludicrous, and even though I guess we don’t all have to like it, it’s always going to be around.

But even if fashion is here to stay, as so many people before me have noted, I sure hope those stupid glasses leave in a hurry.

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