As we watch 2016 dwindle in our rearview mirror, we can’t help but cling onto every last beautifully admirable trend that graced those months of peace, happiness, rainbows and puppies floating atop clouds of bubblegum pink cotton candy.
Yeah, just kidding.
2017, I think it’s time for you to take a good, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself: Do you really want a continuation of the grossness that was 2016?
Shall we just start right off the bat with your ubiquitous, fancy boxed water? For those of you who have been living under a rock, or perhaps just in a place where normal-people water is served, you may not know that the ordinary Tumblr celebrities will just drop dead if they don’t post at least 15 photos of their liquid-filled boxes every 20 minutes.
Look, I’m all for you spending $40 on a five-pack of boxed waters but feel free to not post that on any social media account unless you want me posting pictures of my mainstream plastic water bottles. Oh, wait no, my reusable water bottles.
I’d like now to turn your attention to a few fashion trends—I use this word lightly, considering it tends to have a positive connotation. Ripped jeans.
All right, I’ll allow a little tear here and there. But you know what? If you want to wear some pants that leave the entirety of your knee vulnerable to the conditions of the harsh outside world, please be my guest, but I’m talking about shredded jeans. The jeans that are so shredded to the point that perhaps we just take out the middleman and get you a pair of shorts.
Continuing with the disgusting nature that is the irrelevant and pointless fashion of 2016, this one isn’t even the item of clothing that is the issue. It is the human.
Coats, jackets, cardigans—I’m a fan of all, but excuse me? There are sleeves for a reason. This whole “I’m gonna put the coat on over my shoulders because God forbid I slip my arms through the sleeves that are meant for my arms.” Stop. Just stop.
I hate to break it to you, but walking to your second-period class on a Tuesday is not equivalent to strutting your stuff on the runway in New York City. So, stop.
Not only does it look ridiculous, but it is so unpractical I cannot even wrap my mind around it. Dude, just put your arms in the sleeves! You can’t use your arms if your coat is precisely and delicately placed upon your little shoulders—your arms get cold and you have to live a life constantly hunched over with risen shoulders to ensure your coat doesn’t fall off.
Oh, if only there was something you could do to avoid these issues….
Dabbing. If you are still doing this, please stop considering yourself a positive influence and addition to this world. Whipping and nae-nae-ing. This feels like an artifact of a dance move, and it seems that this dance has already gone through the cycle of being crazily popular for a hot second to being disgustingly constant to, honestly, being not the worst thing in the world as it makes its vintage comeback. Either way, it can be thrown out with the rest of the 2016 pain.
Next time you catch yourself wearing some nonexistent jeans, a jacket that is lightly placed upon your shoulders and drinking out of your $40 box of liquid, take a good hard look at yourself and do the living, breathing, human populace a favor and just please leave the past in the past. It’s time to move on.
-Becca Goren