Bad fashion choices 101

There are many bad fashion examples from the '80s. Day-glo colors. Jeans that were so tight and tapered they had zippers at the bottom. Dance wear as outerwear (leg warmers, cut up sweatshirts, etc.). These are bad bad things that I hope to never see again. I'll admit to owning and wearing some of them. I even owned a hypercolor t-shirt (don't judge me). Some of these fashion choices have tried to make a comeback. Some have unfortunately succeeded (please note: leg warmers have a place, and it's not over a pair jeans).

But today, today I saw something that made me want to claw my eyes out. An abominable merger with a bad '80s fashion example to create something even worse. STIRRUP TIGHTS. Yes, that would be a blend of stirrup pants and tights.

At first glance, I thought they were stretch pants. Then I looked closer and realized they were too tight to be stretch pants and had a pattern like the knitted cotton tights I wore as a child. Then I looked down to her feet and saw naked feet in a pair of really cute heels (how depressing, good shoes paired with bad fashion choices, but I digress). And then I saw the stirrup extending down from the bottom of her tight. Her heels were bare. Her toes were bare. But there was that one offending strip of fabric wrapped around her instep and under the arch of her foot. Why, people, why do these things exist? Who thought stirrup tights were a good idea?!?

I think all students need to sit through a class titled: Bad Fashion 101, how to make better choices. We can get Stacy London and Clinton Kelley to teach it.

And I hope I never ever see stirrup tights again.

"Pimping" the library

As you saw in my previous post, the students are back. Thus begins the week of "pimping" the library. The next week or so is devoted to tours, orientations, a library social, and just about anything else you can think of to introduce the library to students and entice them back to use our resources and services. These activities are for freshmen as well as returning students, transfers, new graduate students and even new professors.

Today was the freshmen orientation tours. In small groups they get a tour of campus given by an upperclassman, which includes a stop in the library. This stop is at most 15 minutes. People (including me - go back room tech services folk!!) volunteered to give a little spiel about the library and its services. We were instructed to highlight certain things, including our incredible reference librarians and the library social event, and to do it all in about five minutes.

That's not a lot of time to wax poetic about our services and staff. Not a lot of time at all.

Groups came in in waves. The volunteers led groups away from the lobby-entrance and gave their talks. The groups then left us to wander to another part of the library and we went back for another group. Being able to project your voice was key. It got rather loud with 8 librarians pimping the library all at once in a not-so-big area.

And bonus points if you got your group to laugh. Usually telling them to come to the library social so they could dance with the librarians did it.

Tell me, why is that so funny?? When are librarians going to shake the image that we are all stodgy and stiff and shushing people all the time? I mean, really, librarians are a bunch of crazy people who generally love what they do. Why else would we choose to do what we do for the salaries we get paid? And we're fun! Trust me. I swear. We're a fun bunch. Really.

Ironically, I did have one student comment on the number of holes I have in my ears (3 on one side, 4 on the other). It seemed to earn me an extra measure of respect from him. Maybe I should have worn a shirt that showed my tattoos (ok, maybe showed just one)...I wonder what kind of response that would have evoked!

Shoe abominations

I meant to blog about this last week when I witnessed it, but time got away from me. However, it bears discussion.

I see, um, interesting fashion choices. I work on a university campus, with other institutions nearby. Student fashion is always creative and different. For example, students wearing flannel pj bottoms in pink with little sheep all over them in public. Often even worn to class, which for students is their "job" for however many years. Not something the vast majority of the world could get away with wearing to work unless you worked from home. But it's university/college society, so students get away with a lot more because it's not "real" society yet. It's an opportunity for them to explore who they are and who they want to be, and this often gets manifested in what they choose to wear. There was a guy at my college that discovered he loved wearing skirts, he found them airy and much less confining than pants, so he wore them for a good 3 1/2 years. But when he started interviewing for jobs, he wore a suit. University/college life vs. the real world. My sister shaved her head during college because she knew it was a time in her life that she could do that and not have it held against her. People kind of expect university/college students to do crazy things.

There are some things, however, that are always an abomination. I see Ugg boots everywhere, and they're bad, but not an abomination. Flannel pj bottoms in public are not an abomination; hell, at least they're covered by their clothes. Don't get me started on the mini skirts and girls that don't know how to bend over and pick something up without flashing their panties to the world. But the other day, on my walk home from work, I witnessed footwear that made me want to gouge out my eyeballs:

Black. Patent. Leather. Clogs.

Yes, CLOGS in black patent leather.

In general, black patent leather should be reserved for formal occasions. It reminds me of the fancy church shoes I had as a child, in a Mary-Jane style. But to make a CLOG out of it is, well, disturbing. Disturbing and wrong.

Wrong. So many shades of just wrong. A shoe abomination. The person wearing them needs to be put in a room and subjected to reprogramming regarding appropriate footwear. Somebody call Stacy and Clinton of TLC's What Not To Wear before I take matters into my own hands.