This ad spoke to my soul during my early-teen years in the 90s. Oh, how I felt this way. Really, really felt this way. Really really obsessively felt this way. Disregard the fact that the ad and cologne were aimed at men...to that all I have to say is pish. I mean, what is it about that tender age for girls--okay, yes: hormones, puberty, chemical imbalances in the head--that makes us yearn, wonder, dream, and become fanatically obsessed with something or someone: a pop singer, an entire band of pop singers, or, you know, an intangible and holy High-School-Senior.
Obsession. I experienced this very thing--it led my heart to jump out of my chest at the sight of one particular person, and me to alternate between writing my name combined with this stranger's surname over and over and over again in cursive, and lovingly scribbling both of our initials combined with a plus sign and encircled by a dozen Paper Mate-inked hearts--all over my binder, all over my diary, and all over the jacket cover of my pre-Algebra textbook. And all the while, this person--or, this being that has been stratified into the status of a Greek god--had no idea of my existence.
Almost twenty years later, I found myself face-to-face with this crush/obsession/person. In fact, we had been neighborly acquaintances for over a month and I had no idea that he and HE were the very same person. I'm still getting over the initial shock, but my rainbow-bright cheeks have by now subsided into a hidden blush, and at the moment I am surprisingly less inclined to want to prank call him and stalk him in L.A. Gear Flames than I am dying to get my hands on a copy of this new book to try to make sense of that time in my life.
(These L.A. Gears appear to have gone on to shoe heaven.)
Even strange episodes like finally meeting a former crush eye-to-eye, after almost twenty years, no less (twenty years??!!), makes me ponder fashion. I think back to that transitional period in my life between pegged jeans and grunge, but I also think about youth and all the awkwardness, uncertainty, absurdity, and beauty that comes with it. Yes, fashion no doubt has an unremitting fascination and obsession with youth, and often appears to idolize youth to the point of fetishism. And sure, there's the very visceral fear of old age that we all experience preceded, ensued, or inflamed by the industry's highly profitable marketing toward and of youth. But isn't it only human to want to relive, rediscover, recall that time when one's inside world is infinitely intense, dramatic, emotional, enigmatic, and new? When the creation and experience of something fantastical appears endlessly exciting...and possible?
To quote Marc Jacobs, "Youth to me is the most beautiful and sexy thing, really. I’m by no means a pedophile, but there’s a purity to youth. There’s an experimental side, there’s a curiosity. All that is more intriguing to me than knowing, headstrong, oozing sexuality."
This take on youth reminds me that there is a difference between "being young" and "youth." To me, fashion's obsession with youth is an expression of our collective desire to see and experience the world with freshness, newness, vitality, creativity, originality, wonder, and awe. Diana Vreeland said that "the greatest vulgarity is any imitation of youth and beauty." And also, "Without emotion, there is no beauty." It seems that emotions can run unbearably high when one is young, but emotion is also a constant flame and the fountainhead of beauty and creativity throughout our lives.
I recently went with my uncle to his class at a local health center, where he and over a dozen others participated in a morning exercise regiment. An elderly man came in supported by a walker and guided by his wife, placed weights on his walker before pushing it to the side, and attentively waited as he sat himself on a plastic chair at the front of the class. A woman wearing her soft white hair in a bun stepped onto a treadmill and walked with a bounce in her step for at least half an hour, bun flopping to and fro with exceptional grace. Watching the group perform stretches while seated on their chairs was like witnessing a beautiful piece of choreography. Every movement was so deliberate, comical, or sweet, and perhaps harder to perform than it would appear. And all I could think was, this is innocence, vulnerability, and youth. This is beauty.
2 comments:
you captured this period perfectly!
Yes, oh how I envied girls with L.A. Gear shoes, and everything that was hip when we were kids. I had to make do with my hand me downs from kids at church. I was lucky enough to get a pair of sweet Guess jeans once, with the nifty upside-down triangle patch logo on the rear. Those were the coolest. Always had to make sure it showed.
I love your story of visiting your uncle. I know exactly how that feels. I saw my grandparents recently and so many emotions came into play. Humor, sadness, youth, vulnerability. You just love them so much, even if grandpa doesn't remember who you are anymore.
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