Junior High School Is Burning

I teach junior high school. It's everyone's worst age to be and to be around.

I thought I'd learned everything I needed to know about that age when I was in 8th grade and decided to cut my extremely curly red hair into the shape of a globe, but it can always get worse. I know that now.

However, this post isn't an expose on the current state of affairs in American middle schools because despite what I say on the daily, I DO NOT want to get fired.

This is about fashion, and I am here to tell you that if you're not dressing like a 14 year-old, you're cancelled.

At my school, even teachers wear uniforms. The communist in me says, "YAS." But the 14 year-old in me says, "Fuck you." I take strong offense at making girls in their peak Mesopotamian child bearing years wear khaki pants, but all I can do is stock up on the world's thickest maxi pads because they will lose their goddamn minds if you hand them a tampon.

Anyway, so when we have a dress down day, WE WERK.

I don't know if you know what a VSCO girl is, but I don't either. What I do know is that to be a VSCO girl, it's required you have crushed velvet scrunchies in every color (preferably pastels) on your wrists, backpack and even in your hair.

Mine is bottle green, and it is very important for me to wear it on dress down day because I once told a student to put her scrunchie up because it was a distraction, and I kid you not, at least six girls whipped around and screamed, "You know what a scrunchie is!?"

Never in my life have I been so offended.

I get a lot of compliments on dress down day because I am very cool, but if they could see what I wore when I was their age, they'd never look me in the eye again.

Your jeans could not possibly be low enough when I was in middle school. Turns out, denim cutting just below your uterus and just above your butt crack looks good only on a very small number of people who don't exist.

When you bent over, of course, your butt crack fully revealed itself culminating with burst of highly flammable thong fabric. Our Hollister shirts were also very tight cutting off at the thickest parts of our arms and stomachs. Good thing our shoes were oversize to balance out the proportions.

In a radical move that makes me believe that they might actually be capable of reversing the effects of global warming, Gen Z is shunning our moronic, bullshit clothes and embracing the loose, high-waisted jeans, baggy tops and thick panty lines of the early 90s.

Important note: if any of these aren't purchased second hand, you must lie and say they are.

I am so proud of them and fully embrace this gift they've given us.

Last dress down day, I wore some very broken in denim and a flannel button down in a men's large. I thought I looked amazing until Luis said, "Ms. Green, you look like you came straight from a farm."

I started to explain that I actually had been raised in a rural community in Northwest Missouri but realized it wasn't worth it and turned my head, so he could see my scrunchie.

I think he was impressed, but I have no idea what boys wear.

Snapchat me if you want to borrow it.