Generation Leather
As a high school senior, I submitted R.E.M’s It’s The End of The World As We Know It to be our graduation song. I didn’t think it would win, but I couldn’t let the irony go untested. I can’t remember what the far more popular choices were— probably something by Lil Wayne— but my song won off a split vote. We took the APs, SAT’s, STD’s, and it was time to move on. It was all over, Micheal Stipe said so.
But I was wrong. The world didn’t end. I had to pay all those speeding tickets eventually. Zoomers have found their own version of the Athens-based doomsday rock band, as evidenced by a disturbing new trend that’s popped up on the app known as Tik tok. As I am not a pedophile, I don’t use the app. But as any good Tik Tok content does, this trend made its way to twitter. Twitter user @rebekahentralgo first brought it to my attention:
There are a million reasons to discount as a new “trend” zoomers seeing their generation as the departure from some blissful innocence of generations past. American culture is largely built on nostalgia; Mark Twain said something about how every generation envies the one before it (ok boomer, my GPA, and so on). But I have one reason we shouldn’t discount the cries of our doomer comrades: Leather.
Listen, I’m not talking about leather shoes or a leather purse or even a leather belt. Those are all joys that can’t be underestimated, but I’m talking about WEARING FUCKING LEATHER. I’m talking leather pants, leather jackets, leather HATS. I’m talking about Lou Reed unzipping them to piss on the audience, Jack White fucking his sister (in a cool way, they wern’t actually related right?) in them, and Winona Ryder wearing a leather duster in a way that single-handedly defined cool.
Long before Chris Black asked “Can I Pull off Leather Pants?” Chuck Klosterman took to the December 2003* issue of Spin Magazine to declare that leather pants can ONLY be successfully pulled off if you have no friends. Today we must take it one step further— leather can only be pulled off when the world is completely crumbling. The zoomers might be wrong, maybe the world will keep spinning. But just in case they’re right, it’s time for you, my friend, to buy yourself some leather goods. Here are the JTTB approved leather goods for surviving, thriving, and being cooler than anyone else during this apocalypse:
The Pants:
The Jacket:
The Bike Lock!
The Bra/Bag/Whatever:
*Sorry for the lack of link, this article is impossible to find online. Go buy a copy of the magazine on eBay like my lame ass did.