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I read a paper today titled "Down With Poseurs!". It talked about why people are poseurs and what the difference is between poseurs and actual original people. After I read that, it got me thinking (which is a danger within itself.) Poseurs do imitate other people, but the problem with that is we all imitate other people. So if you wanted, you could call everyone a poseur because we all are in one way or another. Though what really makes people poseurs is WHY they imitate someone else. If their reasons are because they want to fit in, they do it to get girls/guys or they do it to get attention, that is (by definition) a poseur. I cannot say why I dress or act the way I do except that it is how I feel comfortable. I would also like to be perceived in the opinion "She just doesn't care."
Example 1: Mary puts on her shirt one cold morning. About mid-afternoon, it starts getting hot so Mary rips the sleeves off of her shirt. She walks around the rest of the day in a sleeveless shirt. Sue and Betty both see Mary in that sleeveless shirt. The next day, Sue comes to school in an outfit exactly like Mary wore the day before (pants and everything.) Sue thinks "I want to be just like Mary because all the guys like her and sleeveless shirts show off more skin." Betty also comes to school the next day in a ripped off sleeve shirt but Betty is thinking "I got hot in my long-sleeved shirt so I will just do what Mary did."
In that sense, Betty is not a poseur. Betty is just using Mary's ideas for her own good. Sue, on the other hand, wants to be just like Mary. She posed off of Mary's outfit, not for the right reasons. In my opinion, people like Sue should be shot.
We are all guilty of taking someone else's ideas and passing them off as our own. Many people have different opinions on why we do this. We want the attention that comes with having a new idea. Many people are flattered that someone would want to steal their style. I am not flattered AT ALL. I have my style and they should have theirs. Don't like a band because someone that you think is "cool" likes them too. Like a band because they play good music. Thats what they are there for: entertainment by music. They aren't there for 12 year old teenyboppers to make signs that say "I LOVE YOU...I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABY" and stand in the middle of the moshpit and hold them up. And yes, I have witnessed this. I have had situations where I knock over little girls who position themselves in the path of my moshing madness. I want to grab these girls and shake them until their hair turns brown (all the girls that I have encountered like this have been blonde so I am saying that from my view.)I am so frustrated.
The ones that bother me the most are the girls who go to Gadzooks (there is nothing wrong with that store) but they buy the sparkley shirts that say PUNK across the front and wear them with their Abercrombie flares that were $80 and ripped just to look "punk". Then they tease their hair to make it look messy when they actually spent an hour trying to make it look like that. Unlike me, who washes my hair about once a week and just globs it up with a mixture of glue and african-american hair wax. The difference there is that they want to look "punk" and I don't. People think that by calling other people poseurs, I think I am a real "punk". I DO NOT think that. I am not a punk at all. I will not label myself. When talking about subjects such as this, it is easier to use labels... because thats what these people think they actually are. Labels are a hard thing to explain because no matter what I say, I know I'm going to be a hypocrite later on. |
