Eye Make Up vs. iMake Up

Upon flipping through a recent Rolling Stone magazine, I couldn't help but notice that several of the new musicians (male, musicians that is) have gone to wearing eye make up. A little eye liner, a little color around the edges and there - now you have a cool, trendy new look. If you combine the eye make up with a shaggy, meant-to-look-unkempt-but-really-is-quite-manicured, sweeping across the face, highlighted hair cut, then you have almost every new musician featured in the magazine. This got me thinking. Fashion, when you think about it, is so silly. Or at least the pursuit to be trendy or "in fashion." To try and keep up is so exhausting. It is so transient. It is ever-morphing.

Go ahead, pop that collar. It will be stupid in 5 months. You'll regret that decision in the pictures. Go ahead and buy those a-little-tighter-than-normal jeans. Baggy will be in style in 8 weeks. Trust me. (I can't wait for "sagging" to come back. Or maybe even the Kris Kross thing). Let your hair grow out and swoop it across your eyes. In a few months that will be as played out as trucker hats and aviators.

So what is one to do? Is there a style that trancends the relentlessly changing trends? Does the simple polo-shirt and khaki combo rise above the ebb and flow? I'm not sure. But it sure is entertaining to watch it happen and to watch people chase this faceless ghost named Style. The strange thing about our culture is this Antithesis of Cool Coolness. We are a culture of cowards who thinks they are rebels. As soon as something is cool, it is now uncool. But the thing that made it "cool" in the first place was that it was original and out of the ordinary and new. Indie music is becoming the new main stream. Forgettable coffee houses are becoming the new Starbucks. Little independent iMacs are becoming the new Gateways. You see, technology is the same way. The iPod I got in the summer of '05 now looks huge and ancient like those enormous Zack Morris cell phones. And by 2007 the iPod Nanos are going to look like old Ataris. You just can't keep up. There is certainly more thinking to do about this and how the ebb and flow of cultural trends accelerates and is affected by postmodernism and the glut of information due to the internet (blogs included).

I just want to know when mustaches will be cool again. What about powdered wigs? Or leather, bicycle jackets? Or wearing pony tails out to the side? Or getting extra large T-shirts and making them into dresses by simply binding a belt around them? Or Discmans? Or Minidiscs? Or CD ROMs? Or Laser Discs?