| << Front page | Arts | September 23, 2005 |
Last week I finally turned 21. Reaching for my ID was nothing new; in the
past two years, I’ve grown used to the raised eyebrows and skeptical tone
that comes with getting carded — for cigarettes.
That’s right, it seems that no one in Oberlin, Cincinnati or New York can wrap their mind around the fact that I’m older than seventeen. Even Lorain National didn’t believe I was old enough to open an account when I finally got around to switching banks. (Please note: Neither cigarettes nor overdraft fees are fashionably acceptable.)
To top it off, the woman next to me on my flight to Columbus last month didn’t guess me old enough to drive. Her profession? Sorority coordinator at UNC.
Now, this chick is around college students — college women — all the time; it wasn’t like she was one of those people deceived by watching 25 year olds play teenagers on TV. So why didn’t I look old enough?
Was it my hair? (I’d recently chopped my ever-present pigtails, so that couldn’t be the case.) Could it be my face? Was I the female Matthew Broderick, doomed to look 15 for the rest of my life? Or was it something I hadn’t considered, something under my control: something I was wearing?
With the plane grounded and Miss University Cult-Leader a safe distance away, I confronted the mirror. Somewhere between the city and the Midwest, the irony had worn off my plastic pastel barrettes, my baby-tee had become babyish and my pink mini-skirt spoke only of Barbie.
I had become a victim of kid-culture.
Kid-culture expresses itself at Oberlin in one of two ways: the wearing of T-shirts or accessories designed specifically for those under ten or which otherwise mimic this design, or the wearing of clothes that are so disparate with a person’s size, age or era that the wearer resembles a small child playing dress-up in his or her parents’ clothing.
Both categories abound on campus. Care Bears, Tinkerbell, Mickey and Minnie, Superman and your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man can all be found daily in the DeCafé. Ballet flats — what little girl wasn’t a ballerina at least once? — sashay across Wilder, often paired with black ankle-tights worn under skirts, a style reminiscent of bloomers and this fall’s city-imported trend. Wide hair ribbons and large bows, baby-barrettes, anime-style hair and haphazardly-applied nail polish are as traditional at Oberlin as hair-bleaching and manicures are at most state schools.
As to the “dress-up” phenomenon, the often-worn beads and pearls of various lengths, (but especially long-stranded), the oversized thrift blazers and resurrected prom dresses all lead to the general effect of the wearer looking like a child attending a tea party: small, playful and young.
The antithesis of kid-culture is best represented by my former roommate, who, upon her 20th birthday, decided she needed to grow up as soon as possible. She quickly revamped her wardrobe, folding away her My Little Ponies tee and shelving her bird-flippingearrings in favor of a new, leopard-lined Ann Taylor coat, a Coach wallet, a teacher-style book tote and a general lusting for all things maternal or Tiffany’s, strange as that may sound.
Perhaps it is the absence of sororities that allow emblems of childhood and kid-culture to thrive at Oberlin. On a campus where the perfect top is more often selected to amuse and impress than to bare one’s assets, it is not surprising that a carefully chosen Superman wristwatch or a Ren & Stimpy ball cap can score points in Stevenson. But maybe the Oberlin trend is a symptomatic magnification of a larger cultural shift.
In past generations, college was cheaper and students often held part-time jobs that yielded a reasonable income. In this environment, students experience greater financial independence and, consequently, a greater sense of independence all-around. It was possible to be a college student and at once financially independent from one’s parents, the institution and the government.
Under the care of in loco parentis and our parents’ money, higher education has led to the distinct sense of prolonged childhood. We are not college students, but “college kids,” kept in a holding area until we’re ready to become adults. And at a school like Oberlin, unattached to a university, that already boasts its own “culture” and is ever-increasingly residential, the rift between college life and “real life” seems even more severe.
The urge to rebel against the aging process is understandable, especially at a school where many of us take on more than our share of responsibilit — be it environmental, political or academic.
The urge to rebel against being trapped between childhood and adulthood is equally compelling, and our wardrobes have become the perfect battleground to work through these impulses.
As for my ex-roomie, her phase eventually passed; she realized that she was
not yet ready to grow up. After all, she was “only in college.”
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