The Oldest Person Ever to Set Foot in Hot Topic

...Is me. I’m pretty sure of it, especially the Hot Topic in Bloomington, Illinois. I was there with my friend Elizabeth, who is over a year younger, and we were thumbing through racks of Justin Bieber half-shirts, lace-up fingerless gloves, and Hello Kitty lingerie when I spied, across the way, the store where women our age were supposed to be shopping. It was like Chico’s, without the southwest feel, with knit vests and muted pantsuits. The color scheme was a milky pastel and the clothes were boxy and shapeless, designed to make the wearer as unobjectionable as possible. In contrast, Hot Topic looked pretty good, even with all of the Twilight merchandise on full display.

Now, to be fair, I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and going to high school in the early to mid 1980s I witnessed (and wore) the most matronly hairstyles and clothing I have ever seen marketed to young women. The short feathered hair, frosted and permed. The high collars, brooches, and scarves. The granny boots. Prairie dresses. Pantyhose. Big pants and blazers (thank you, David Byrne). Neon. No one looked good in any of this, not even the prettiest, most petite women. That the 1980s was a bad time for youth fashion was confirmed by a recent watching of the original Prom Night: all of the women playing high school girls dressed like high school principals, leaving for school in the morning as though driving to the office. All the scenes between couples looked like incestuous mother/son pairings, because the boys looked about 25 years younger than the girls did. “Is that a mother of the bride dress?” Elizabeth asked of Jamie Lee Curtis’ prom dress, a pink jacket and dress combination that looked something like an outfit Queen Elizabeth wore on her recent US tour.

On the one hand, we have the Sex and the City women, who brought into fashion the enormous flower brooch and spiky heels—tacky and uncomfortable. The cougar concept is equally unhelpful. It just seems desperate and kind of sad, and I wonder if it’s even a real thing; I don’t know any woman over 40, personally, who wants anything to do with younger men. It’s not that I want to wear predatory or revealing clothing—I just want the option of stylish clothes without having to shop at the junior department (which adults can now do, thanks to the childhood obesity epidemic.) Also, I want the experience to be fun, the way Hot Topic is fun for the kids who shop there. Yes, Hot Topic has its detractors, but is it really that bad? Although the outfits sold there will not stand the test of time, clothes adolescents wear are not supposed to.

One store name that intrigues me is Forever 21. The implication is that older women can shop there—the clothes can help you stop time, just at the age when you can drink legally. But they have a maternity line now, too, which makes me think they want older women--at least women in their thirties--as customers. When I was 21, I wore, to a college winter dance, a velvet bow in my hair, a red plaid skirt, a corset belt, and high-heeled shoes with a rhinestone bow. I would just as well have time move forward, with something more interesting on the path between Forever 21 and Coldwater Creek.