on trends and judgment

Since the rise of TikTok, it feels like there’s been a more prominent awareness of and pressure to adhere to trends. Along with this, there’s been a rise in TikTok accounts of people who are trying to “help” you not look so embarrassingly outdated 🙄🙄🙄, and it culminated in this ridiculous New York Times article: “Millennials Don’t Know What to Wear. Gen Z has Thoughts.” The link is a gift link, but I wouldn’t recommend actually reading the article. To summarize, it’s a very detailed list of exactly what you should and shouldn’t be wearing to avoid offending Gen Z¹.

Here’s my response (below in slightly edited text and here in a more off the cuff and agitated state):

mindfulcloset

A post shared by @mindfulcloset

I’ve been a personal stylist for 11 years and have worked with over 400 women and I know that I have a little bit of a different approach than most stylists. I prefer not to focus on arbitrary restrictions like basing your style on your body size or shape or current trends. I’m really about helping women uncover all those restrictions they’ve been dressing by and discovering what they really want to wear, what they really feel good in. 

But is this what we’re doing now? We’re really just telling people at the height of the climate crisis, go out every time there’s a new trend and buy this new thing?

We’re talking every week at this point. Are we really just working for free for corporate America and promoting this rampant consumerism? 

I’m not immune to trends. I am currently not wearing skinny jeans (thing that you don’t need to know, skinny jeans are “out” 🙄). But that’s something that I track, something that *I’m* interested in. Some people are interested in tracking menu trends or the latest tech. I’m not going to ever judge someone for not being interested in the same thing that I am. This idea (which has also been going around TikTok) that people who aren’t interested in keeping up with fashion are somehow not open to new ideas in the world is bonkers. 

People might not be keeping up with trends because they’re in survival mode. Or they just have more important things to think about. In my mom’s 73 years on this planet, she has never given one minute of thought to what she should wear. You know what she was doing instead? In the 70’s, she worked for a civil rights lawyer, in the 80’s, she was organizing unions in sewing factories, and in the 90’s, she was teaching elementary school 60-70 hours a week, not only educating her kids but really taking care of many of them outside of school hours. Are we going to judge her because she doesn’t keep up with fashion?

That’s what really bugs me about this whole thing, it just has such a mean vibe. Let’s judge people based on their words or their actions or their kindness, not their clothes. So yeah, Gen Z, you can wear whatever the fuck you want, but just leave the rest of us alone. 

The judgment piece is the part that’s really important here, so I’m also sharing a past post I wrote about how you can’t get comfortable with your body and your style until you stop judging others. 

(Originally published here on 3/4/2020)

Do you worry about what other people will think of your clothes and your body? I do. I think most of us do. It’s kind of a human, sociologically appropriate thing to wonder - where do I fit in here? Do I belong? 

If we want to not have to worry about others judging us, we have to stop doing it ourselves. Start noticing when you have these thoughts about others. Maybe you work with someone and have found yourself thinking, wow, she should really touch up her roots. You see someone at the grocery store in pajama bottoms and think to yourself, really - you couldn’t put on real pants? A friend is wearing a top that you deem too tight in her midsection and you think ooh, I can’t believe she’s showing her belly. You see someone who dyes their hair and you judge the fact that you can see the dark roots.

What do any of these things really matter? What if we said, "so what”? Like, here’s a statement of something, and then what? Ok, I can see her tummy and it’s round. That is a statement. I can see her tummy. So what?  Does the fact that her tummy is visible mean that she’s not a good person? 

Statement: she’s wearing pajama bottoms to the grocery store. So what? Does that mean that she’s a bad mother? 

Statement: Her roots are growing in. So what? Does that somehow affect my life? 

Of course not and of course not and of course not. 

The more you can start to allow imperfections in others, the more grace you’ll give yourself. The next time you look in the mirror and think that there’s something wrong with your knees (not kidding, a complaint I hear often), maybe you can think “so what?” and go on with your day. The next time you go to Target in your pj’s because you’re sick, maybe the person who sees you will just think to themselves, cool, cool, that person’s wearing pajamas, moving on now. 

Did you read the article? How did it hit you? Do you enjoy keeping up with trends or could you care less?

1. To be fair, much of Gen Z seems to be super cool about everyone wearing whatever the f they want, but these people in the article do exist, they come up in my feed periodically, and they are sending this messsage to hundreds of thousands of people.