Fashion

I've talked about this before - it's highly regrettable that schools and parents are hardly able to teach the young even half of what they need to know, in this big, bad world of ours. What children are not formally taught, they begin to pick up on their own.

So maybe it's high time that Fashion Sense became a compulsory topic at school. Right after Maths and before P.E. If not for the girls, then please, let's have the lessons for the guys.

Because guys have it much worse than girls - society's demands and pressures somehow predispose guys to developing very strange ideas about fashion. In fact, so rare is the guy who possesses a keen sense of dressing that he is instantly celebrated as a Metrosexual, a Fashion Designer, or an Open Gay.

Perhaps it is the different way in which fashion sense penetrates the male and female worlds. Females rely on discussion groups, Think Tanks and voluminous magazines to efficiently disseminate the latest trends and styles. If a fashion revolutionary like Madonna changed her hair today, a tribal native in Africa would hear about it by next week.

Males don't do that. Fashion sense evolves slowly, within small communities of males, much like the way gene pools work. Only upon mixing with males from a different community does peer pressure set in, and a brand-new fashion equilibrium actualize.

Don't believe me? Just look at how RI boys and ACS boys match socks with black shoes. While the RI boys will happily wear white socks with black shoes (a fashion by-product of the Prefects' attire), the ACS boys would rather amputate both legs than go out in public dressed like that.

I should know how it feels to be the unwitting victim of a fashion faux pas. I've walked into a room, wearing my jeans the same way I've worn them for years, to the reception of shocked gasps and transfixed gazes of horror. Kind people would then sit me down, pat me on the head and tell me they understand how it all isn't my fault, it was the unfortunate way I had been brought up.

Jeez, I might as well have walked into a room full of vegetarians, dressed in a costume of a headless, bleeding cow.

Sometimes, all it takes is flair and charisma to make the difference between a fashion pioneer and a fashion disaster. Carry it off with enough panache and people will actually emulate you, rather than crucify. But be warned, if you're someone like me, just give up. 10 years later the memories will be less painful.

I know to give up because of a pink shirt Haoyun convinced me to buy. It's the only pink shirt I have in a wardrobe of blues and blacks, and every time I wear it I attract criticism like Law Faculty attracts pretty girls.

It doesn't matter if Metrosexuals are accepted and no longer stoned in public. It doesn't matter that I have good looks, great skin and abs to crack eggs on. Once I don the accursed shirt, I become Pin-Up poster material. For throwing darts.

One last tip for the guys for now. Wear Your Pants Low. Any girl secretly crushing you would have "all the magic sudddenly disappear", if ever they find out your wear your pants high.

Trust me, I swear.