To the editor,
I’m writing in response to the article printed in this weeks The Renegade Rip Vol.73 No. 6. The article was titled Fashion Emergency: Rolling backpacks, last season’s styles, don’t belong on campus. Frankly, I was quite offended by the message Ms. Millian conveyed in her article. She showed an obvious standing against fellow students who do not fit the guidelines of being, or dressing popular. She event went to the extent of mocking a student because he shops at two stores that don’t share the same fashion sense saying, “The two together create an image of… a gothic surfer? A goth with a tan? A surfer with skulls on his suit?” She delivers the message that shopping at Wal-Mart puts you at “the bottom of the heap.” Why does it? am I at the “bottom of the heap” because my mommy and daddy don’t just hand me $100 a week so I can spend it on one pair of pants and a shirt that says Quicksilver on it? What happened to being allowed to be yourself? Why! should we all fit into a cookie cutter mold shaped like a Roxie sign? Ms. Millman stated that, “There is nothing wrong with dressing like an individual,” but she criticized those people who do not fit the socially popular mold found in the pages and covers of Cosmopolitan and GQ. In the headline to her article she wrote, “Rolling backpacks, last season’s styles, don’t belong on campus.” Does that mean that if I don’t have $100 a week to shell out on the latest fashions after I spend $500 or more a month on rent and living expenses, about $80 or more a month getting to school and back and more money than I wish to count at the moment on school tuition, overpriced textbooks and other school supplies, then I don’t belong on campus? To quote Aldous Huxley, “Oh brave new world that has such people in it!” What will be proposed next to keep us all looking and dressing the same, bokanovkification? A social class ordered from Alpha to Epsilon? I don’t want to be ! taken wrong. I am not attacking those who do strive to look and be “preppy.” They have the right to do so. I will agree that Ms. Millman has the right to her opinion and has the right to express that opinion freely. I will also agree that you, as the editor of the newspaper, have the right to print that opinion. I will also tell you my opinion of the article. I think it is narrow minded and alienates fellow Bakersfield College students and I think it’s crap.
Robert Johnson,
Bakersfield College student
661 822-9543