Most fashion fads all start the same way: some musician wears something unusual on the stage or in a video, and millions of teenagers and college kids run out to buy it. This process has led all of us to wearing some laughably stupid shit over the years.
Which just makes it all the more frustrating to think back to all of the music fashions that should have caught on, but didn't because society apparently just wasn't ready. But oh how I wish it was socially acceptable to wear...
If you were alive in the 80s and had working ears, you know who Cameo is. If not, then you may only know them as, "the band whose lead singer had a red shield on his dick."
Word up.
That piece of clothing right there is called a codpiece, and when you wear a codpiece, you are ready for fucking battle. It sends a message to your opponent that says, "I'm about to beat your ass, and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. But I'm protecting my stuff-n-things because after this is all over, I'm nailing your mom." Add in the fact that it's violence-and-rage red, and there is not a man on earth who will be able to maintain eye contact with you through a conversation. Or a woman, though for very different reasons.
What we do not understand is why, after Larry Blackmon hit airwaves with this fashion in 1986, this accessory didn't become as common as the necktie. By now it would have become so accepted that the freaking President would take the stage in one on inauguration day.
What Caught On Instead:
Tupac's exposed boxers/low hanging pants.
Though we should probably also blame a Marky Mark-era Mark Wahlberg for this one:
As an aggressive show of manhood or sexual virility, the low-hanging pants trend was just cowardly. It was for people who wanted to show their fuck gear but didn't have the balls to just not wear pants. And we've all seen these unbelievable douchebags out in public, pulling up their beltline with every second step to avoid the pants slipping down around their knees.
Our feelings on the matter are that the primary muscles involved in walking should be the legs. If the arms are doing just as much work, it's time to find a new fashion. Do ladies honestly get turned on by the sight of your junk hiding behind huge baggy striped boxer shorts? Especially when you could have your dick decked out in red armor like a brave crimson knight?
You saw Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers wearing these awesome pants in Young MC's Bust a Move video:.
You can't tell us those aren't comfortable. There has never been a product in the history of mankind that's fluffier than Flea's stuffed animal pants. We don't care what anybody says, nothing bad can come out of something fluffy that you can legally cuddle with your balls.
Sure, they're probably pretty warm in the summer, but tell us that you could honestly have a bad day when standing waist-deep in stuffed animals. Imagine getting mad at someone else while either of you are wearing stuffed animal pants. Imagine fighting a war, and trying to bring yourself to fire upon an enemy wearing stuffed animal pants.
What Caught On Instead:
Emo skinny pants with white belt combo.
We're not sure who did it first, but we're at least throwing a glance in Fallout Boy's direction. Skin tight, ball-crushing jeans, topped with a glaring white belt. Many teenagers in the 1970s had posters on their walls of women wearing this exact outfit. Pants so tight, you could see if they waxed their legs before the photo shoot.
You know that sound a vacuum packed jar of peanuts makes when you open it for the first time? We'd rather our pants not make that sound every time we unzip to take a piss.
Forget the stupid shit Lada Gaga wears day to day. An unnamed dude in the background of the "Bad Romance" video (one of the guys participating in the Rape Auction about two minutes in) is wearing something that should have been become standard wear about, oh, 5,000 years ago:
Holy shit, that video has been watched 300 million times. And you know why? Because there is a guy in it with a golden strap-on beard.
This has all the makings of a generation-defining fashion, and has had more than enough time to surface in the public. Look at it. It has all the flash and shininess of jewelry with the girth and manliness of a beard. If you were a salesman pitching that product to our office staff, we could stop you right there and you would have sold a minimum of all of them.
But there's so much more. It's strap-on. At the end of the night, you could take it off (like we ever would) and soak it in gold beard cleaner. You can't do that with an ordinary beard. Have you ever been to a restaurant and noticed that the silverware was a little dirty? Those cheek guards easily double as soup spoons. Planning on starting a bar fight? Not only will the gold beard guarantee that you'll be in one, but it'll serve as impenetrable protection against any cheek and jaw shots.
What Caught On Instead:
Grills. Mouths full of gold teeth.
We're blaming this one on Nelly. Though it's been around for a while, he's the one who brought them into the mainstream and caused thousands of high school kids to look like mentally challenged UFC mascots. Yes, they're gold, and yes, they're removable, which on paper should be a plus. But look at them.
via cracked
On the off chance that a woman gets bullied into going out with you, she has to either watch you awkwardly remove them and set them aside before dinner, saliva glistening off of your dashboard in the light of a drive-thru window... or witness half of your Big Mac clinging to them like crushed up cereal pieces on a Swiffer Vac pad.
Devo has been a band for 37 years, but the lead singer could knock on my front door right now and I wouldn't know him. Unless he was wearing that hat.
It's distinctive. And practical. Walking through a construction site? No problem. Need a jello mold? Just turn it over. Building a sand castle? Shaping a cake? Protecting yourself from the rain? Transplanting a geranium? These hats have you covered.
They're called "Energy Domes," and they were actually created by the band. The only thing that could make this hat more perfect is if when taking it off, your hair retained that shape. Shame on the public for not accepting these beautiful creations into their lives. Especially when you consider...
What Caught On Instead:
Bret Michaels' taco-shaped cowboy hat.
Only Bret Michaels could take something as annoying as a redneck cowboy hat and make it even more ridiculous. Sadly, that fashion trend swept through Hollywood...
That hat just spontaneously appeared there when Brett stood next to her.
...faster than a case of celebrity-spread chlamydia. Only more painful and a lot less attractive than the genital discharge. No one looks good in a cowboy hat except a cowboy. And they don't exist. Hell, in the catalogs where they sell the things, even the models look like douchebags in them:
Yes, you lose a little depth perception with the condom glasses, but it's a small price to pay in order to send a very clear and absolutely honest message to your potential partner: "I intend to fuck any second, without warning... possibly while reading something."
If you wear those glasses while asking someone out and they still say yes, they automatically agree to have sex with you. There's no mistaking it. Unfortunately, Lisa Lopes was the only human with big enough balls to wear them.
What Caught On Instead:
Horn rimmed glasses (Rivers Cuomo of Weezer).
We're blaming Weezer because the lead singer was doing it back in the 1990s "before it was cool," and he's still doing it today. But we're giving an honorable mention to the now cancelled TV series Heroes, that had a main character who was actually referred to as "HRG" for "Horned Rimmed Glasses."
There is a small percentage of the world's population who do look good with this fad - Rivers Cuomo simply doesn't look the same without them. However, it makes the remaining 99% of humans look like pretentious assholes.
The sunglasses/helmet combo alone is badass enough for us to be sad that Missy Elliot's fashions never made it into working society. But that bag suit... how fun would that be to walk around in? Built in air conditioning for the summer? Built in heat for the winter? You could wear it in any weather, as rain and snow would just slide off.
And if you got tired of walking, just drop and bounce to wherever you have to go. Man, we can't tell you how much fun we'd have just bouncing and flopping all over the damn place. There would be no more sadness in the world if everybody wore this. And you know you'd be nude under there.
What Caught On Instead:
Big, puffy "gangsta" coats.
Poor kids in the 1970s and 80s had to wear these big, stupid puffy coats, and we hated them. It could be ten degrees below zero outside, and we'd still sweat under all that material. They made swishing sounds when we walked, and you could never find the damn zipper under all that fluff.
We're sorry, but if I were to get lost and wind up in the very worst neighborhood in all of the United States, and some guy approached me with a gun and that coat... I'd probably pat him on the head, give him a piece of hard candy, and tell him to run along back home before it got too dark out. His mom is probably worried sick.
Our prudish society is so unready for the "it's just a sock on my dick" fashion that we had to pixelate the photo of it being worn. That is criminal.
Let's just skip right past the "absolute freedom" part because that's fairly obvious, and get straight to the practicality of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' sock fashion. We'd only need two types: black for business affairs/job interviews and white for casual wear. No more dressers taking up space in our bedrooms because a single milk crate could hold your entire wardrobe. Every time we bought a pair, we'd get two outfits. We could literally do an entire week's worth of laundry in our bathroom sink.
Of course when it's cold, we'd have to switch to sports socks, and there is no female version. That's probably why it never took off.
What Caught On Instead:
Axl Rose's Spandex bike shorts.
You are exactly as naked with spandex as you would be with the sock. Every nook and cranny of your body is terrifyingly visible, right down to the exact length, girth, and compass position of your penis. Yet these made it into mainstream fashion, while the sock remained strictly footwear.
That's right; we don't have to pixelate that one. Take a good, long look. When your kids, present or future, ask you what is wrong with the world, we want you to show them this.