Image Courtesy of Company Pictures.
Last Sunday night, I was standing in line with my friends to get into a club.
Though one of them was wearing blue jeans, they were torn and worn in a punk-ish way, and the other was wearing a striped casual suit over a white tank top, also looking like an artist with his purple gemstone necklace; I was wearing a floor length, nude Ottolinger dress I loved, (I’d just gotten it on sale) and a spiked choker. Overall, we could self-proclaim that we looked eclectic, but we felt cool nonetheless.
When we got bounced at the front of the line fifteen minutes later, we weren’t upset that we couldn’t dance (in Berlin there’s always another club five minutes away), but at the girl in the white denim, fast fashion looking mini-skirt in front of us who waved in without hesitation. We mulled this over, holding a grudge as we considered another person who we saw in line with a perfectly crinkled Yohji Yamamoto jacket who also got turned away just for the “basic” girl to walk right in. It wasn’t, fashionably, fair.
We walked home, with our outfits a mish-mosh of layers, putting on t-shirts we bought earlier at the vintage market attempting to prevent goosebumps from the cold, unable to stop criticizing the fashion faux pas we saw in the queue. Admitting myself as someone who is prone to making quick judgements, this wasn’t out of the ordinary for me. I never really considered my habit of judging girls who I felt were “basic”; it’s a thought pattern I never thought twice about.
Image Courtesy of Company Pictures.
The day following the club incident, I indulged in my guilty pleasure of listening to Forbidden Fruits, trendsetter Julia Fox’s weekly podcast in which she seemed to speak to me directly; she professed her realization that the way in which her internalized misogyny manifests is when she hates on “basic” girls. Something clicked for me as I listened to her explain how she felt that every girl she met had to somehow wow her, that society sets such unrealistic expectations for women that being “basic” just doesn’t cut it.
But why can’t a girl be “basic”? We all want to be sometimes. Admittedly, we all are to someone.
Today, with different niches and trends evolving at all times, the idea of who is “basic” isn’t limited to the 2013 Starbucks drinkers who wore Abercrombie and smelled of Coconut Passion. Though there is a stereotypical idea of how a “basic” girl may behave, it is a term that is closely associated with perspective on style; in a world of constant change, where personal expression through clothing is becoming increasingly individualized, there is a higher chance that the new Balenciaga bag you pre-ordered will already be “basic” by the time you receive it. The perpetually revolving door of trends is moving faster than ever before due to social media feeding its users content based on previous likes, allowing them to fall into niche fashion rabbit holes invented by the algorithm. Even within fashion’s tight knit circle that is known for its harsh critiques on both insiders and outsiders (though now you’ll have to schedule time with someone deigning to lend time to criticize outsiders… insiders have busy schedules), there are some pieces, such as the Balenciaga Cagole, extra points for the one with the heart charm, that have become “basic”:
Overheard at a cafe in Paris:
“I swear… if I see another pair of Bottega Puddle Boots or rip-off Miu Miu miniskirt (eyeroll)”
But you see, these things are not mainstream “basic”. To the untrained eye, they would be considered the exact opposite. Even those at the height of creative genius have been accused of being, dare I say, “basic”. In a book one of my fellow club-rejectee friends lent me, they touch upon how New York Times critic Cathy Horn claims that Hedi Slimane would not have come about without the influence of Raf Simons. To paraphrase, she called Slimane “basic”. Basic in the most un-basic way, yet, in a regard, I interpret her words as saying that elements of Slimane’s work are something that have been done, seen, had their trips around the block, moments of fame. Horn proceeded to be banned from his YSL show.
And in an attempt to be uncondescending, all of this is not to say that “basic” doesn’t thrive. Hedi Slimane (who I personally don’t regard as basic) is one of my favorite designers (skinnier than the models scarves and studded leather!), and Balenciaga has sold thousands of Cagole bags that have attended thousands of ultra-exclusive parties on the arms of ultra-exclusive “basic” it-girls. And we keep judging these girls. We critique them because we always expect something new.
Image Courtesy of Company Pictures.
Whether we like it or not, labeling girls as “basic” is projecting ideas of how women should act and behave based on some invented social standard. And I never considered myself someone victim to the phrase: internalized misogyny. I consider myself a girls-girl, but as I began to reflect, I came to realize that no one is insusceptible. I think it is something all women experience in some form. For me, like Julia Fox, it is in placing my unwanted opinions on so-called “basic” girls.
A fashion-girl through and through, I find myself constantly fighting against the possibility of a “basic” appearance. Is my criticism because I expect women to continuously inspire and surprise me, or because secretly, I envy their capability of making things easy for themselves? I expect women to strive to my definition of complex, as this is the standard I set for myself. But there are thousands of definitions of complex that women cannot conform to, and mine is no universal truth; slowly but surely, I am coming to see the importance of accepting my inner basic girly and the fact that it’s okay to sometimes take the easy way out – or into the club.