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Defying Diana: A Guide to Fashion by the Hand-Me-Down Kid
Jennifer Clayton
United KingdomGALLERYCONVERSATION
On the one hand, thanks to an indulgent 25-year-long diet of advertisements, peer pressure, popular culture and magazines, I am...
I learned from a very early age that wearing the wrong thing can land you in all sorts of trouble. One bright summer's day, when I was 7 years old, the bullies in the playground battered me over my head with my bright green trainers that I loved, but had bought from a market rather than a sports shop.
Consciously or unconsciously, every single child has to make this choice. Even when schools desperately clamp down and put uniforms in place, fashion has a way of seeping through in the little details, from shoelaces to bags to hairbands. The bullies have an eye for detail and will always find a way to separate the weak from the strong, the rich from the poor.
For many, conformity is bliss and those who choose to play the system: buying branded goods, following magazine tips for "Hot Hair.", dutifully lowering their eyes when big, stilettoed Diana from year ten is coming down the corridor. They hope to God she won't notice them, because they heard what she did to Tracy Evans last week for the crime of having a dodgy perm.
Who can blame them, really, for playing the game, and making their life at school just a tiny bit less hellish? While there has always been bullying as long as children have congregated and not all of it is fashion related, yet, I feel that the pressure on our mother and grandmother's generations to look the same and blend in was not as intense as we have experienced thanks in part to the prevalence of advertising and dominance of global brands in the twenty first century.
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