Katrina Allen

I ended up people watching in a pizza/bar place near campus. It’s funny; I never realized how often I spend time observing people in public. They are fascinating. Coming up with my own explanations for certain eye-catching characteristics of people has always been a somewhat enticing area of interest for me.

There could be a whole story behind that frown of a young woman with perfectly coifed hair. This exact woman walked by in a small, tight, rectangle-like black dress – the kind we’re used to seeing. Her sleeves were long and billowy, though, a sheer fabric which added an element of interest; a new and unexpected addition to the familiar.

She wore matching black wedges, carried a small clutch, also black, with her phone clenched on the outside, checking it every few seconds as she walked. I thought her hair was perfect – a modern beehive ‘do; the standard dress-up hairstyle for straight-haired gals with thick enough hair to make it look sleek yet effortless.

Her face bore full makeup, which was clear, but I also found myself wondering what she would look like without it. She had a sort of smoky beauty to her, which I believe the charcoal liner and heavy mascara accentuated. Her right nostril had a hoop through it. Maybe I’m biased, but I feel like there aren’t many people who don’t look cool, good, interesting, and/or sexy with some kind of nose ring.

At the bar, there was a young man who was clearly a bus boy. He had dark, curly hair, which was kind of long, but definitely not much more than past his ears. He wore thick, square
glasses, but violated expectations with the clear rims as opposed to the regular square, black thick-rimmed ones (which by the way, exactly five people in the whole restaurant had such glasses. It’s a trend, whatever that entails). I’m not sure if employees there are required to wear black or not, because the two people working the register seemed to wear whatever they wanted, but this young man in particular was clad in all black. He wore shorts that had clearly once been black jeans. Cut just above the knee, with two small rolls at the hem. He wore long black socks which he scrunched up, dark grey vans, a plain black t-shirt, and a dark brown belt.

He had that in-between beard-length – not quite a five-o’-clock shadow, but not yet a full bushy beard; a surprisingly perfect balance of scruff yet classy, in its own way.

The last person I’ll talk about is a young man from a group of about five that were at the restaurant watching the Blazers game. He wore a cotton-blend v-neck (probably from American Apparel, which is totally an assumption I’m making, but a good guess nonetheless), basic jeans, Vans, a backwards baseball cap. He had a closely-trimmed beard, and he had that fresh and sharp look that I’ve seen before but I don’t really know how such an aura is achieved.
There were a couple of general things about this activity that I found to be absolutely striking. First of all, I was very disappointed that I didn’t see any tattoos or interesting piercings. Second of all, I was somewhat surprised that this disappointed me. I found myself judging all of the people in the restaurant (and granted it was 8 pm, and there really weren’t that many people there – the majority of the people were probably at this point in the bar portion, down in the basement).

But judgment ensued, for sure. No one’s personal dress or style stood out to me or excited me. Except for that first girl who walked by, no one that I saw had any piercings. About a third of all the guys in the room were wearing baseball caps, most of them backwards. I counted at least five pairs of thick-rimmed, black-framed glasses, and at least ten cotton-blend v-necks.

Why did these styles bore me? Am I judgmental? Probably very much so, as it turns out. But variance is beautiful. As far as I am aware, variation is an integral aspect of evolution. Why then, are we so obsessed with fitting a certain trend? I am really not exaggerating, however rude it may seem, when I say that practically everyone in this place was dressed the same. What is that all about?

~ by katrinaa@uoregon.edu on April 30, 2014 .