Fashion tribes
时尚部落
Last week, in a shopping center, I saw a teenager wearing jeans that were too low at the back to cover the upper part of his underpants. I thought to myself, “He looks ridiculous. Why does he want to do that? Why doesn’t he pull his trousers up?” Then I realized that the boy was wearing his trousers that way for exactly the same reason that I dyed my hair green when I was a teenager: It’s fashionable. “Old” people like me (I am 32) aren’t supposed to understand or to think it looks good. This fashion and the other youth fashions I saw in the shopping center are a language that young people speak that older people sometimes can’t learn. But I was interested and I wanted to find out more, so I asked my niece, Hannah, to help me. She’s 15, and she was my guide for my journey to find out more about teenage fashion.
上周,我在购物中心看到一个十几岁的年轻人,他穿的牛仔裤后边低得都盖不住内裤的上缘。我心想,“他看起来很可笑。他为什么要这么做? 他为什么不把裤子拉上来?然后我意识到,那男孩那样穿裤子的原因和我十几岁时把头发染成绿色的原因完全一样,就是为了“赶时髦”。像我这样的“老”人(我32岁)不应该理解或认为它看起来很好。这种时尚和我在购物中心看到的其他年轻人的时尚是年轻人的语言,比他们年纪大的人有时是不会明白的。但我很感兴趣,我想知道更多,所以我请我的侄女汉娜帮我。她15岁,是我了解青少年时尚的向导。