Summer is wonderful: no responsibility, just dozens of magazines I never found time to read this year. Suddenly I’m 14 again, curled up on my group home bunk-bed with a JANE mag (RIP), pre-MTV Dashboard Confessional on the stereo and nowhere to be. Ask me why I have hundreds of old magazines stacked neatly in a closet and I’ll explain how it’s my archive.

I am this person today because of several factors, but those magazines are one of the few factors which are tangible. One day I will probably scan them all into PDFs and recycle them, but I like seeing the articles, ideas, stories, and opinions that shaped my young, impressionable mind and taught me how to write and how to think. I probably picked up my eye for design right from those cool cut-and-paste pages. I’m not a pack-rat, I’m just a nostalgic magazine junkie with too much respect for this underrated medium to throw it in the trash.

I have mixed feelings about the show How Do I Look? because they seem to pick on eclectic/colorful indie kids and gloomy punk chicks a lot and give them this uninteresting, generic look. The stylists don’t seem to “get it“, which makes no sense to me because fashion is often about making a statement and you’d think fashion pros would understand this. Yet time and again they keep putting these women into clothes that “minimize” this or “enhance” that, but they’re missing the fucking point!

This one punk/goth girl named Mia on the episode “Damsel Distressed” is on the show because her friend thinks she needs to attract a new type of man because she’s been burned so many times in the past. The problem is that dating a guy in a blazer is no different than dating a guy with a septum piercing. Good guys come in all styles, and just because this girl will now be attractive to the white collar crowd instead of artists and punks doesn’t mean she’ll find true love. I’ve personally always found punk boys to be incredibly feminist in their attitudes, and quite sweet. Maybe she should stop dating womanizing cockrockers. This brings me to the heart of the issue:

Making judgments and generalizations based on style is wrong, but it is forgivable. What is not forgivable, is sterilizing the diversity we see in street fashion and in various subcultures by labeling it immature, ugly, and slutty, and ordering that it be changed. These women don’t have a problem with their clothes – other people have a problem with their clothes. They could have made her look better without ditching the punk aesthetic. Put her in some Vivienne Westwood knockoffs for fuck’s sake and fix her makeup. Mia is a musician, not a stenographer. It’s not like her career is in danger if she wears a corset as outerwear. This show is actually pretty fucked.

I know it’s totally ridiculous, but I officially have “baby fever”. Sometimes I wish I were a few years older with a degree, career, husband and house so I could finally stop obsessing about the future and just live it. There’s no stopping the biological clock, I suppose, but 24 seems a little early to start ticking! Ideally I would be 28 at least, haha. Justin and I have been together for almost 7 years, lived together for 6, but we’re still such kids. Luckily I’m a control freak and over-plan everything (I never pay retail, travel without an itinerary, etc etc). I guess having such an unusual, dysfunctional family life has made me long for the traditional things. I wish all the pieces would just fall into place but it seems lightyears away…

I give up on shopping for Justin’s Christmas gifts this year. I did great last year because I had more time. It is extremely taxing doing the research (reading reviews & specs) on effects pedals and other musical equipment. I already spent 6 HOURS online and I’m only more confused and torn than when I began.

I think I’m just going to get him a few small things and give him the rest of my “gift budget” in cash toward buying his dream amp. I believe there’s only so much you can do with effects if you’re using a mediocre amp. He has quite a few pedals already and although he loves experimenting with them, he’s probably not getting the most out of them with his current setup. I just wish I had $1000+ to outright buy a good amp for him, but I’m just a jobless college student.

What do you think? Is it strange or tactless to “go halves” on a large gift for your boyfriend/girlfriend they otherwise couldn’t afford?