Fashion trends seem to change everyday, without any real rhyme or reason. In the early ’90s, flannel and grunge band t-shirts were super-cool. Then it was ’70s retro – polyester, shiny overshirts and pleather pants. Lately, looking punk is the way to go. However, with so little punk music available in the mainstream, the question is: Why?!?!

HOT TOPIC

The most recent example of young people flocking to a new look centers around Hot Topic, the mall-based superstore that caters to rebellious teenagers who need to look and feel like they’re cool and different, without actually buying anything that really is cool and different.

Hot Topic offers spiked belts, sexy thong underwear and punk rock t-shirts. They also offer Salvation Army-style clothes that are actually brand-new and cost 20 times more than they would at a thrift store.

Wait! Why would anyone rather buy something that looks like it’s second-hand and pay so much more instead of actually going to a second-hand store and buying the real thing?

“We’re just a lazy culture in general, and it’s trickled into fashion,” said Josh Freedom Dulac, pop culture journalist for the Sacramento Bee. “Instead of taking the time to wear out our jeans, we buy them pre-worn.”

“Salvation Army is hard to shop at,” said Hot Topic shopper and Sacramento State freshman Melissa Smith. “Places like Hot Topic have everything laid out for you.”

So, maybe it is easier to go to a rack where everything is organized and pretty, but where does that leave the real punkers? How can you tell the fakes from the naturals?

Just check the tags, I guess, if it really matters that much.

AVRIL AND HER CLONES

There’s probably no bigger walking contradiction (and walking billboard for the “Hot Topic Generation”) than Avril Lavigne (Canada’s most recent musical export who’s been topping the charts lately with the hits “Complicated” and “I’m With You”). Often dressed like someone who’s alternative, while singing songs that are as bubblegum-pop as Britney Spears, Lavigne once actually described her music as “skate punk.” Oh yeah, I’d love to see how many skaters are slamming to Avril’s below-average ultra-pop.

However, she seems to be selling enough records to justify her remarks. Maybe her music is now “skate punk,” because people are, by and large, eating it up.

Maybe, then, there is no real definition to any term in pop-culture, just what we’re told it means by MTV, the Gap and, GULP, Avril Lavigne.

THE NEVER-ENDING PARADOX

So it seems not being trendy has become trendy. Looking different is the norm, and so everyone seems to be wearing a belt with spikes on them, or dying their hair three different colors, or going heavy on the black make-up.

Being a punk was the definition of anti-trendy, but with so many people looking the part just for the recognition, it seems as if this problem is a never-ending paradox.

“It’s like in that movie ‘Singles,'” said Dulac. “When that guy says he has no rap, but the girl says ‘Yes you do. Having no rap is your rap.'”

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