Bucking the Trend

I’ve developed a new pet peeve.

If you participate on any social media platform, you’ve, no doubt, come across posts with headlines that read something like this: 30 Things That Are Dating Your Kitchen. 5 Trends That Women Over 50 Should Not Follow. Stop Making These Fashion Mistakes Now!

 

The cultural guardians of good-taste rail against such concepts as “slut-shaming,” and “fat-shaming.” Well, I think I’ll become the advocate against “trend-shaming.”

I realize that those types of posts come from advertisers, but what I think really unnerves me is the subtle, subliminal message that we must conform or be outcast. If you now have granite counter tops in your kitchen, I hate to tell you, but by the wisdom of the trend watchers, you are passé and woefully out of touch. Darn, I just got my granite countertops in my kitchen four years ago, and now according to these terrorists of trends, I must rip them out to be on “on point.” Ah, no.

The irony of all these types of promotions is that they usually are interspersed among such insipid platitudes like: Dance Like No One Is Watching; Everyone is Beautiful in their Own Way, Blaze Your Own Trail.

Yeah, be your own kind of beautiful, but only if you follow our lead. 

I’m not against advertising, it serves a great purpose. It underwrites so many things in our lives from sports to even this publication. What I’m fed up with is the push for conformity in their quest for cash that annoys me.

This doesn’t happen exclusively on the internet. I remember about a decade ago watching an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show that featured a stylist, who critiqued audience members who volunteered to receive some fashion tips from him. After he told various women that their hairstyles weren’t right for their face shapes, or that the color the woman was wearing was draining her complexion, one woman stood under his critical eye.

He sized the woman up and sneered, “I see scuff marks on your shoes. That is a disgrace. It signals to me that you don’t care. Why, you are probably wearing underwear with holes in it.”

The poor woman seemed to shrivel under his criticism, and my heart ached for her. He humiliated her on national TV, and I wished someone could have shone a light on his soul because I bet it was quite shabby.

I guess what I’m saying is that while it’s nice to be trendy, fashionable, beautiful, and with-it, but that is not the most important thing in life. Being content and happy is, so don’t let anyone sell you that you are less because you don’t want more of what they’re trying to peddle to you.  

 

This article originally appeared in the October issue of Northern Connection magazine.