So what is it with indie kids and shorts? Okay, I looked past the selective, emaciated, American Apparel-inspired hipsters who have been wearing skintight cut-offs for the past several years (I don't exactly get it, but at least they were still a head-turning minority). Anything that shocks (even as seemingly unfashionable as that) is still okay in my book. I was discussing this with a very pro-cut-offs friend of mine and she very bluntly pointed out to me: "It's summer. If it gets hot, you cut off your pants."
There is something very Rock'N'Roll about that.
And I'm not talking about the few form-friendly females who took up wearing elegant hot pants a few years back (Kate Jackson and the other fairer members of The Long Blondes certainly looked delectable, to say the least, but because of America's consumption of fast-food, only about 1% of the population will find themselves fit for this style in their lifetime). What I'm talking about is the average UArts student or the average fan of indie music. When did these loose, half-pants become an acceptable expression of a subculture?
I recently attended The Futureheads' show at the Church. I wasn't there to see the headliners, who I was completely unfamiliar with and whose Google images made them appear completely uninteresting. I was there for immediate support, The Like, an indie pop group who channel mods and the work of William Klein into a sassy brand of pop. Well, about 80% of the audience was donning shorts. Not cut-offs or designer hot pants: plaids, khakis, even Bermudas.
Sure, shorts are great for the average upper-middle-class dad who drinks Coors Light and indulges in the staple-of-white-suburbanism that is golf, or the pre-teen who feels constricted by big-boy-pants when they're playing kickball, or the preppy jock who shops at mall stores whose aesthetic is entirely derivative (unbeknownst to them) of gay porn, but what captured the hipsters? Was it the cargo shorts that Lou Reed wore in the press photos for White Light/White Heat? Was it the mesh numbers that Morrissey wore while recording Meat is Murder? Or was it the fashionably pleated mini-pants that Dennis Lyxzen wore on Refused's last tour?
No - because none of this ever fucking happened! Unwashed leather, skintight denim, and designer slacks have all proven to be hip at some point in music history, but shorts? Prove me wrong.
Yes, when I was a highschooler I did regularly wear striped tights or fishnets under black Lip Service jeans cut off at the upper thigh, but I was simply trying to cleverly question the part that shorts played in the promotion of heteronormativity (they seem to be quite an integral part)... and look like I was one of Marilyn Manson's Spooky Kids. In a sense, I guess I was being ironic in a way... and so were those cut-off-wearing AA models. Somehow, this latest breed of indie-inclined shortsters don't seem to be sporting their duds with any sense of irony.
One of the things that I've always found admirable about hipsters (or any subculture, for that matter) is that they actually take time to carefully construct their image (even if that image is meant to look deconstructed). Unlike those who have any idea what's going on pre-season for the Eagles or those who can name John Mayer's last album (or any John Mayer album, for that matter), hipsters always seemed to keep some sort of sex appeal in mind. Whether it was the enticing bulge evoked by circulation-free trousers, the Crayola-plastic-scissors-created asymmetrical haircut that is just so ridiculous that it signifies some kind of carnal confidence, or the intellectual elegance implied by a designer blazer worn in the mosh pit of a church basement, there was always some attention paid to how enticing one might be to possible mates.
So what is the appeal of shorts? Is it the fact that they display the hairy legs that every girl fantasizes about? Is it an attempt to resemble one's father? Is it the fact that you know your hipster girlfriend used to ogle the head quarterback, despite the fact that he always called her "freak" when they passed in the hallways, and you love her so much that you want to indulge her fantasy of a machismo lack-of-fashion-sense? Seems like a bit of a long shot.
Call me old-fashioned, as I sit here in my sperm-killing jeans, Doc Martens, and pin-striped jacket, conservatively conforming to the parameters of Rock'N'Roll fashion, but I always though it was those Rock'N'Roll elite who should be dictating the fashion of their followers and I just don't see the protégés of Lou Reed and Morrissey bare-calf-edly spawning a musical revolution.
