Change moves in spirals, not circles. For example, the sun goes up and then it goes down. But everytime that happens, what do you get? You get a new day. You get a new one. When you breathe, you inhale and you exhale, but every single time that you do that you’re a little bit different then the one before. We’re always changing.
–Ryan Gosling’s character Dan Dunne in the film Half Nelson
I have been thinking about clothes a lot lately.
The older generation, the ex-hippies who all sold out long ago, also think about clothes a lot. Pointing at the goth kids and the punk kids, and nowadays the indie and emo kids too, they ask a seemingly sensible question: If you’re such a unique little snowflake, why are you trying to look like everyone else in your clique?
Sometimes I think they miss the point on purpose. The urge is not to look unique. The idea is to specifically not look like you, whatever the “you” happens to be at the moment. Cats who wear counterculture uniforms know that clothes make a statement more than most. That’s why they do it, you know?
But screw them anyway. I mean, come on! The kind of pants I wear is supposed to be meaningful? Look at where that thought ultimately leads: thousand dollar suits. Million dollar dresses at the Oscars. Handbags–ugly handbags–worth hundreds of thousands of dollars(!). Reprehensible, right? Ditch the fancy dress and feed a homeless person! Or put some smart, underprivileged kid through school! Anything would be better than throwing away a fortune in order to be “fashionable” (and doing the same to be not fashionable seems at least as bad).
These thoughts have been on my mind because recently, I came across a handful of Calvin Klein t-shirts that I could buy at a dirt-cheap price. They fit well and were made of lightweight cotton with a high thread count. Perfect, in other words, for the hot summers here in Virginia. Even so, I almost did not purchase them because of those two little words, the designer’s name. I almost bought t-shirts at WalMart instead–shirts made from heavier, sweatier cotton, for less than $1 less.
People who choose to pass on clothes they like because the clothes do not belong to a brand like CK are probably asshats. But would not buying a t-shirt I liked because it did belong to such a brand make me an asshat, too?
It was a crise de conscience, if a somewhat silly one. I can hardly believe that the same questions that occupied my time in high school are still propping up. In the end, I bought the shirts because they fit my needs at the right price point; only later did I realize that I did the wrong thing.
Not because I bought something with the CK brand, though. It would also have been the wrong thing to ditch the t-shirts and purchase whatever dirt-cheap brand I could find at WalMart or Target, or to stop by a retailer like Sears or JC Penney. Life is full of decisions where none of the available choices is actually the right choice, and this was almost one such occasion.
Almost.
Next time, I think I will drop the “cheap” from my criteria and shop around for fair trade, ethically produced, sweatshop-free clothes. And I’ll buy them whether or not they have some damn smug holier-than-thou logo on them because either way, it’s the right thing to do.
The important thing, the thought that hopefully will not change for a while from all this, is to remember that everyone will be weighing the same factors differently, and that is okay. Life is a journey, not a destination, and the journey is way too short to spend time worrying about what other people are wearing.