Me Making Fun of Bad Dressers

You may have two reactions to this post. Some of you may get the mental picture of this and laugh until you are sick. Others of you may think I am being too hard on them. :)

Cross cultural dressing is a dangerous thing when you may not understand the culture you are trying to adapt to. I would also to point out that I know that the locals have done the same thing to me. They have thought and at times said, “What is with you?” So just as I am making fun of these guys, I know that this is happening to me. I know that me trying to adapt to this culture has made some Arabs go, "What are you doing stupid? Go back to your own country!" So it all evens out in the end. Adapting cross culturaly can bring on some embarrassing fashion moments.

So I was sitting in one of the many malls we have here waiting for the movie theater to let us in to see "The Brothers Grimm," which is a good movie by the way, when three guys walked by me. They were probably around 16ish years old, so part of this can be blamed on age I guess, but they were completely "punked out."

All three of them had on real baggy pants, sagging way down. Two of them had real bushy hair with baseball caps on. One of them had his Yankees cap turned off center with the bill flattened. The kicker of this whole thing is that the third one had his real baggy pants, and oversized T-shirt that had some far-off American logo on it and get this... a huge belt buckle. I am talking about one like you get when you win the National Bull Riding Championship. It was huge!

The funny thing about this is our innate sense of not wanting to be like anyone else, but we still desperately want to fit in. These kids had Yankees products, mixed with skater apparel, and to top it off, a cowboy belt buckle. These kids are supporting a team they probably don't care about, dressing like skaters when I can confidently say that they probably haven't even seen a skateboard before, and a belt buckle from a culture that I can guarantee that they have never experienced.

Why, because it came across the airwaves and landed on their TVs. I love self expression! You can express yourself however you want, but I will express myself however I want and my form of expression will be to make fun or you expressing yourself.

Have a great day!