North Community High School
Polaris October 1 1984
I went out in search of "punk rockerss." What I found was a group of
individuals who are different but who don't consider themselves "punk."
As
one student, who calls himself, "Doesn't Give a Dang"' (DGAD) explains, "It's
not how you dress on the outside, it's what you really are on the inside. A lot
of people don't take the time to know us. They just take one glance and "know"
someone's a bum without every trying to understand."
Why do these
individuals choose their unusual style of dress? Melissa ***, who dresses
sometimes like Boy George expressed this thought: "Because it's different. It's
hard to say. Lots of people are afraid to dress this way. I do what I want. It
proves that nothing is sweet and pretty anymore.
Bradley ***said, 'I like
looking different. It's comfortable and my Mom hates it."
DGAD (see left)
says, his clothes are ripped because clothes naturally get torn so why not help
it along its journey. "I just wear my clothes til they rot."
Most of the
clothes are given to them or bought at Tatters, Ragstock, the Pink Closet, the
DAV or Army Surplus. Bradley said, "If I find something I like, I get it."
Most of the jewelry is gotten from mothers, or as DGAD said, "If 1 find
something shiny, I put it on." For the guys jewelry also refers to chains,
spikes, buttons, studs. etc. The girls wear their grandmother's old jewelry and
any earrings that will fit on a wire--anything imaginative can conceive.
Do
they feel discriminated against? Heck yeah. "I won't take off something that
offends somebody, people have to give both ways. I've got to be myself" is the
way Melissa expressed it. Bradley said "All the time, I get yelled at from car
windows; an old lady even yelled at me once, but I've never been beaten up
because of the way I dress, although I almost was one night... Actually when
people don't react I get depressed."
Another said, "No I don't...I don't
care what people think."
Bradley summed it up very well when he said, "I
just am. People who call themselves Punks.. It's fashion that way, like the
Edina people...they go out and shave their heads, put on a trench coat and say,
"I'm a Punk, but they're just clones... It's more than a look."
The right to
be different is part of the history of this country. Or maybe it should be that
the fight for the right to be different is pert of the history of the history.
Don't be afraid to be yourself.
As a British philosopher once said. "Don't
worry when older people look down on you because of your green hair, painted
faces and weird clothes. You're the new royal family, the wild nobility of this
land. So walk proud.