My friend Max is a Ken doll. He’s not literally a Ken doll, just metaphorically – metaphors… My friend Max is a Ken doll. He’s not literally a Ken doll, just metaphorically – metaphors are something you’ll learn about now that you’re in college – in the sense that he looks good in pretty much anything. When you go shopping with him, you really just want to dress him up. Max is one of those annoyingly inspiring people who thinks that just because he can wear whatever he wants because he will look good, and thus feel good, everyone should do the same.

The other day, Max and I went window shopping and saw a charming little outfit that was a little kooky. Max, in his idealistic way, said that if someone were to like said outfit, they should just buy it, regardless of what other people might think. In fact, Max insisted, if he wanted to wear, say, a Batman suit that day, he should have been able to without worrying about societal implications.

This idea tickled me pink, if only because I have always wanted to have a friend who wears superhero costumes.

Unfortunately, though, College World does not really accommodate or welcome outrageous and free-spirited fashion choices into its ivory-tower arms. There is a middle ground of fashion that covers the majority of students, but like a bell curve – also something you’ll learn about in college, if someone strays more than plus or minus a few standard deviations from the mean, that person might be teetering on the edge of two dangerous situations.

The first source of trouble for the garmently adventurous comes when someone dresses to show who she is, and it turns out she’s not really like that at all. While I certainly don’t encourage innovative fashionistas to dial down their style to sheep-like, fashion is the easiest and fastest way to get something across about yourself, and it’s important to make sure that you can back up what your acid-washed strait legs are putting on the table. Take the case of the pseudo-intellectual professorial type. If this person decides to don tweed, corduroy pants, a sweater vest, loafers, non-prescription specs and a pipe all at once, he better be able to speak Greek and tell me the similarities between Zen Buddhism and Wittgenstein, or else I will call him a big, fat faker. Then again, if he can do all of those things in the short amount of time my attention span grants our conversation, I will probably call him a big, fat pretentious person.

The second danger is the risk of being unfairly stereotyped. College is full of judgmental, shallow people. Sure they’re good people, but let’s face it, we’re all human, and we all make silly little judgments about pure strangers. And since fashion is the easiest and fastest way to put something out about one’s self, it is also the easiest and fastest way to garner clues about a person without having to actually talk to him.

Say you encounter a Pitt News columnist who just happens to put a lot of stock into the idea that you are what you wear.

If you were wearing a Batman suit, she would probably think that either you are a superhero, or that you are crazy, or that you want people to think you don’t care that they think you are crazy, which, to this Pitt News columnist, seems kind of silly, because if you weren’t wearing the Batman suit in the first place, she wouldn’t think you were crazy. And that just makes the columnist think you might be a little insecure.

On the flip side of that, though, the columnist has probably also made a number of base judgments about people who don’t make an effort to have any kind of individual style. So, if you’re sitting next to someone who is dressed pretty similarly to you or taking a stroll with your boy toy in your matching sweater sets, she will probably force you into an unfavorable category of clone.

There is simply no way to win with this columnist, just as there is no way to win in college – something else you are soon to learn.

Although it can be dangerous to be fashionably extravagant, it can also be dangerous to be fashionably monotonous. So perhaps when choosing your ensembles, you should just wear whatever the heck you want. And if you feel inclined to wear a Batman suit, please do. Come and find me, I will be your best friend and make you cupcakes. But beware, because if the bat signal does go off from the top of the Cathedral of Learning, it’s up to you.

E-mail Cassidy at [email protected]