Get Off My Lawn!

I'm surrounded by young people whose habits confuse and surprise me.

The campus uniform is a hoodie worn with shorts, tights, or jeans (which apparently must be low-rise for both sexes and skin-tight for the females). A hoodie is an impractical item of clothing in nearly every situation you can dream up. Heavy, bulky, and totally unsuited for a wet climate. Is the hoodie a statement of rejection of common sense? A signifier that the wearer refuses to accept reality in preference for his/her/its own construct thereof?

Water bottles have been required gear for self-proclaimed greenies for many years. But the latest craze here, mainly among girls, is glass water bottles. Huge Ball-brand jars with screw-top lids with holes lined with O-rings through which a straw is inserted. These items are inexplicably made for this purpose. The glass water bottle fits right in with the hoodie: heavy and impractical. What happens when you drop it, and you will most certainly drop it.

Unwashed hair also seems to be required. I am talking about hair that hasn't seen water or soap in days. Greasy, dull hair plastered to skulls, necks, and cheeks. It's gross and I can't help wondering if the rest of their bodies have seen soap or water either. Some of my classmates apparently wash their hair no more than once a week. You might think it was a public statement, a rejection of the bloated personal care product industry, which IMO is a perfectly fine industry to reject, but many of the women put on makeup every day (on a face surrounded by greasy, lanky hair) and most of the men shave every day. They are clearly not rejecting the superficial trappings of cleanliness, and personal care, just the actual cleanliness itself.

Admittedly the sample population is pretty biased. OSU seems to contain a student population who for the most part has never left Oregon, much less traveled outside the US. In French class today, I had a conversation with two new partners. One guy had visited Paris with his high school class for three days (I thought, at last I can chat with someone who has done some traveling--most of the class has not left the US). I asked him about the restaurants he visited--because Paris, and France in general, is of course known for its varied and interesting cuisines. The only restaurant he could recall was McDonalds. In Paris. FFS.

Yes, yes, I was just as annoying when I was 20. I went through a punk phase, shaved my head or let my hair grow a bit and shaved patterns in it, wore clothing unsuited to the setting and weather. I lived in a radical vegetarian, clothing-optional coop for nearly two years as an undergrad. But wearing hoodies in the rain and carrying fucking glass jars around all day long are not experimenting with social norms or boundaries. They just seem silly.