Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 1985)
/\iyncm/ vi/jc:tj reveals attitudes * ■ H\ TRICIA PARKER Sta ff Writer It’s the vear of' androgyny all oyer the world. Annie Lennox and Da\id Bowie domi nate music, menswear, the fashion page, and Boy George just about everything else. But at Texas AfrM, men still dress like men and women dress like women. Everyone, that is, except a small group of near-androgynous people here who brace popular opinion to be different. The dictionary definition of androgyny is one who has characteristics of both sexes, but the definition has been stretched to include everything from transsexuals to the avant- garde. Some deny the definition applies to them but, undeniably, they have a special flair which makes them different. Clothes are an essential part of their an- been marked down and it’s still there, then I buy it. That means no one else wants it. That wav I save a lot of' money and I have some thing I know no one else will be wearing." Ginger savs she dresses the wav she does because it is progressive and something she thinks will come into style in a few years. “In high school I was never part of a little group," she says. U I always tried to do my best to look the most opposite from the groups as I could. Now I really like the way I look. I don't understand how people can go around dressed alike. “I remember when I was a little kid see ing a T.V. show called u Be Yourself' and that's something I’ve always wanted to be." Emily Lee's hair is her most unique fea- drogynous image. ture. It is a blunt cut %te ”™ aressas Ann, whose Corps-cut brown llllir and prop-school hhclhis razor cut on the other make her look like a a lanky S1,i( - i a , nd is easilv 1( i ,en - schoolboy, says she dresses . Thc owner of the the wav she does because it s place that cut my hair differently as some of us do, funny looks are inevitable," savs Ann Robbins, a senior psy chology^ major. “But if you dress to make Ann, whose Corps-cut brown hair and prep-school khakis make her look like a lanky schoolboy, says she dresses the wav she does because it’s comfortable and she’s lazy. “If s a personal style Eve found more com fortable," she says. “This is not the height of fashion. I do own dresses but I just don’t feel comfortable in them." Ann says her style of dressing came from necessity. She says she was too tall and thin to wear the styles popular when she was in high school and found the uncluttered lines of menswear looked better and felt better. She says she dresses for comfort, not fashion. Ginger Hudson is premeditatedly unique. Her hair is mostly long and blond except for where it is shaved in terraces like an Incan farm on one side, and cut in a chin length blunt cut on the other, and growing out pink at one ear. • “I can’t do a thing with it,” Hudson says. “I cut it myself so I was really scared. I could barely see over there. But I’ve had little kids come up to' me in the grocery store in Hous ton and call me Bov George.” Her baggy olive pants and shirt obviously didn’t come from Foley’s. Where does she shop? “I go to the Mission a lot,” she says, “and I look for sales. If something is on sale and it’s jor, says. “He said Why would anyone want their hair cut like that’. The hair's a mistake.” Her hair and baggy unisex clothes cause a stir when she walks across campus. “They can stare all they want,” she says, “it’s my hair." Mike Tagaras, a sophomore aerospace en gineering major, gets his fair share of stares. His neatly cut hair and baggy European-style clothes attract attention, and not always of the right kind. “I feel good about the way I dress,” he says. "I'd hate to look like everyone else. I feel a lot of people here are fairly ignorant, mostly country boys who think if you dress different you're some kind of weirdo. Androgyny is just a word someone came up with, but I don’t feel it applies to me.” Mike says he too dresses for comfort but fashion is still very important. “You can’t say you dress for comfort on ly," he says. “Do you wake up and say Tm going to dress for comfort today’ or do you wake up and say, Wow, these pants really look great.' If you dressed purely for comfort you’d wear sweats everyday.” Mike says fashion is what each person feels comfortable with. “If you’re brought up to be yourself and you’re brought up to be a cowboy and dress See page 12