Traumatic Trend Spotting

I just got the latest issue of Lucky magazine and am frankly traumatized by a trend they featured. Pegged pants. Ugh! I hope that - like high-waisted jeans - this look will be an option rather than de rigueur. Although at my age nothing is "required" the way it seemed to be in high school.

Pegged pants, whether pinned, rolled or a combination of the two will always live in my memory as one of the most horrible trends ever. Even at the time I didn't like it and in fact stopped doing it for awhile. Someone said to me "what, do you think you're better than us" and so I reluctantly started pegging again.

It sounds ridiculous in retrospect, but in a small town there is nothing worse than being accused of thinking you're better than anyone else. In fact, there's even a name for this phenomenon: Jante Law. It's origins are Scandinavian, but I think these "rules" apply in small towns of any ethnic origin.

There are ten different rules in the law, but they are all variations on a single theme and are usually referred to as a homogeneous unit: Don't think you're anyone special or that you're better than us.

Thou shalt not:

1. believe thou art something.
2. believe thou art as good as we.
3. believe thou art more wise than we.
4. fancy thyself better than we.
5. believe thou knowest more than we.
6. believe thou are greater than we.
7. believe thou amountest to anything.
8. laugh at us.
9. believe that anyone is concerned with thee.
10. believe thou canst teach us anything.

Don't get me wrong. I love small towns and love my fellow Norwegians even more. But there is so much truth to this! It also reminds me of people I know who are offended by the movie Fargo (one of the best films ever, in my opinion) and who even walked out of the the theater in anger/embarrassment/whatever (see numbers 8 and 10 above).

I really digressed from my original point about the pegged pants trend. Trust that this is one I will not be following!