It’s freezing!

Fashion should serve us bulky sweaters and insulated pants for cold Canadian winters. (Photo by Deborah Oomen)

I feel at my best when I spend a little more time than usual getting dolled-up. I’m sure some of you would agree with me. However, I wish you didn’t, because this is the perfect example of the influence the media has had, and still has, on us.

As children, we couldn’t care less about what we wore and what we looked like. This changed radically over our teenage years. It’s a critical period of time when we try to discover who we are and to decide upon the image we want to set out in the world, while dealing with pressure and judgment from our peers.

We are constantly exposed to billboards, magazines, movies, TV shows, Hollywood star drama and other social media which are sure to affect our perceptions of beauty. Usually, a ‘pretty girl’ on a magazine cover is air brushed, photoshopped and far from her actual self. However, if that’s the image I associate with being pretty, I will try my best to match that image the next time I seek feeling pretty.

I tend to laugh at fashion. I like to believe the fashion industry is trying to fool its consumers by coming up with the most hideous trends and convincing them that they’re hip, but with the true goal of seeing how gullible their consumers are.

My favourite example is the crop top. I’m 99 per cent sure the fashion designer who came up with that idea was Edward Scissorhands. He’d be the one to mistakably cut a shirt in half and decided to make it the new and exciting trend.

This silliness takes a serious angle when we enter a boutique. If I’m trying to find a simple, everyday t-shirt, I’m stuck looking through shirts that have the back open, the shoulders cut off or a V-neck (or all three at once). Shopping becomes a sport when you have to dig and sort through these endless varieties. I can hardly find my regular, everyday t-shirt because few are made available: instead, I’m encouraged to go for the ‘half the material, same price’ shirt. No thanks!

If I could manipulate winter fashion, I would make insulated jeans and blown-up sweaters. We live in Canada, where we are lucky to experience all four seasons— can’t fashion understand that by now?

Fashion encourages people to dress a certain way, and if everybody is doing it, it becomes a norm. Let’s change that norm and become our own fashion designers. After all, it can’t be worse than Edward’s design!