Opinion

Looting Hoff’s jewelry box

UMaine's depressing sense of fashion

By Mike Hartwell

Posted on Sept. 29, 2003, at 12:00 a.m.

Recently the administration at Bangkok University in Thailand announced a devious plan to encourage students to dress more appropriately. They worry that too many female students wear tight skirts, consequently distracting their male counterparts. The school’s administration has said that the females’ urge to be trendy “may put them in danger.”

What the school is doing to combat these rogues is entering students who dress well into a lottery to win jewelry. This is no Lisa Frank collection. They are giving out real gold and diamonds just for being a swell dresser. President Hoff, are you listening? Your spidey sense should be tingling.

As much as a clotheshorse like myself would like to see such a plan of rewards at our beloved university, I don’t think it’s our best course of action. I believe we would be served better if we punished the hordes of lousy dressers on campus. We could purchase electrical shock collars that go off when you even think about putting on that tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt.

Besides, if we did have the reward system, I’d be so hobbled over from all the gold chain necklaces my friends would end up making lame “jibber-jabber” and “I pity the fool” references around me.

First off, the engineering students deserve the most criticism. I don’t really get it. They’re supposed to be the smartest kids on campus. They are so dedicated to their studies that they’ve all taken a vow of celibacy, but none of them seem to comprehend basic clothing concepts like “clean” and “matching.” Whenever I go to Hilltop I see at least one black T-shirt with a clever no-one-understands-me phrase. The jeans and T-shirt look isn’t for everyone, especially when it’s an off-white “Class of ’02″ shirt and light blue Levinskys. And a quick note to all the kids with replica University of Maine hockey jerseys – we get it. Give it a rest.

There are so many examples of lousy trends on campus. There are the floppy anim� shirts, the Nu-metal baggy and saggy pants, the phony vintage trucker hats, and many more ugly high school trends that never went the way of the caribou. At least I don’t see anyone wearing those stupid bucket hats anymore.

I know it doesn’t count as clothing, but something needs to be said about all the people that ride unicycles to class. It was kind of a novelty last year when there were only two guys doing it, but this year I’ve counted at least six of them and the joke is long dead. As far as transportation is concerned, unicycles are terrible. They go backwards and forwards for balance that they roughly equal normal walking speed. They take up so much room on the sidewalk, and they scare off girls worse than a Monty Python reference.

Lastly, a lot of the girls with belly shirts need a little reminder. If you have stretch marks, cover them up. There are too many fat kids on campus that pick up the trendy fashions earmarked for skinny people. It’s people like this that made our beloved school famous for its albino back fat collection.

I don’t understand the fat kids who dye their hair, get piercings or any other kinds of body modification for that matter. Why don’t they just modify their bodies to be not fat? If you’re overweight, you should be required to wear a bright orange jumpsuit everyday, then you’ll think twice about wolfing down those Memorial Union nachos.

Mike Hartwell is a sophomore journalism major.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2003, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.