Well, it happened again you guys.
For the second year in a row, I failed to make the cut for the Women of Color Fashion Show. And yes, I’m not a woman and even the Caucasian race has disowned me for lack of “color,” but this issue runs much deeper than that, you guys. If a blindingly pale white guy like me can’t walk down the runway at a fashion show established with the specific intent of celebrating minority women, what can I do?
Next thing you’ll tell me is I can’t join the Korean Student Association. What is going on?!?!
After last year’s failed audition, I spent all summer and fall compiling the sharpest resume I was capable of producing … and was still turned down. “You’re not a woman … of color,” they told me. Well if Helen Keller stopped at no, we would never have gotten the telephone — actually, sorry I was sleeping through the Helen Keller lesson in grade school — but you get the point. If a guy who read three-fourths of a book on fashion shows and has “decent” communication skills doesn’t qualify, then who the heck does? (Answer: women of color, but ignore that for the time being).
It’s 2012. I thought we were beyond segregation; but when we spend a night honoring the well-deserved talent and accomplishments of a gifted group of minority students, we are, in a very ancillary and indirect way, kind of sort of putting down the white-male contingency. And it’s not that I’m against the fashion show, but I just don’t think I’m asking too much when I suggest they change next year’s event to “The Women of Color (and Ben) Fashion Show.”
What better way to celebrate diversity than by throwing a random white guy into an event advertised as a platform for minority women to express themselves and their uniqueness? Imagine this scene, a beautiful woman strutting down the aisle in a sparkling red dress, so elegant she vacuums up the air in the room such that every spectator is struggling to regain their breath in fear of asphyxiation — THEN — a white guy (me), in khakis, a solid blue polo and some form of generic sneakers stumbles down after her, waving at the crowd and killing any sense of ambience previously established. Sounds bad, right? Well that’s because I’m not finished.
Because this little disturbance culminates in the two of us coming together at the end of the runway, locking hands before lifting them to the sky and shouting, “Togetherness!” Everyone looks around in confusion as I grab a mic and proceed to address the crowd with a near hour-long dissertation on how we as a society have an obligation to be as politically correct as possible, no matter how absurd. At points people will squirm in their seats, having not signed up for the ethics lesson, and the model on stage may even sit criss-cross applesauce once her feet, in heels, can no longer take the strain of standing upright, but in the end we will all be better for the experience; especially myself, having hijacked an otherwise wonderful event on campus and turned it into a platform for my own absurd manifesto.
And that’s all I’m asking — is to be included. My formal request to put on a “Men of No-Color (Because Our Skin Doesn’t Properly Ingest the Vitamin C from the Sun’s Ultra-Violet Rays) Fashion Show” was unanimously vetoed. They said it was “unconscionable” and a “pathetic attempt to exploit a cultural loophole,” not to mention the title wouldn’t fit on any posters.
What this truly comes down to is that I’m out of outlets for which to show off my new jeans. They’re a little flashier than I thought when I purchased them in the store, and a multitude of friends have identified them as “runway only” jeans. I don’t want my $89 going to waste, and thus have decided my best option is to make the Women of Color Leadership Team’s lives miserable until they give up and put me in the show next year.
So despite the fact that my jeans will, by all accounts, be out of style next spring, I’ll see you all on the runway in 2013!
