On Sunday, March 8th, a friends and I decided to get the inside scoop on what it feels like first hand to be an outcast in today’s society.
Well okay, we didn't really decide, it was an assignment in our social studies sociology class. The assignment was to do something out of the "norm". We were supposed to be a counterculture in society. After thinking all day in class, Amy Hart and I decided to wear our bathing suits over our clothing in public scenery. First we decided to go to the Mall Of America but quickly decided to go to our local Target instead. After all Target would give us enough of the reactions we needed for the experiment of the assignment. I met up with Amy at her house. She walked outside and I could not help but laugh at how ridiculous she looked. A sweat shirt, jeans and a pink Polk-a-dot swim suit strung around her clothing. Not that I looked any better with my long sleeved shirt and blue jeans with an orange swim suit with a picture of a sun set stretched across the front. She hops into the passenger seat of my silver Blazer.
" I cannot believe we are actually doing this!" stated Amy. Mrs. Pawlicki was right, being a counterculture did make me feel rebellious. MY hands started to sweat, I was getting more nervous the closer we got and I could tell by her fidgeting that she was getting nervous too. We both agreed that we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. As we approached a stop light, the car next to us was a white Oldsmobile. Inside were a very old lady and a very old man. The old lady just stared at us in disgust. We laughed it off but both grew more nervous. It was time to walk into the store. We both grew more nervous. I no longer felt rebellious, just silly. Then I thought that I was stupid for caring so much, it was just clothing. Walking from the parking lot to the store consisted of one awkward look from a middle aged man and his three or four year old daughter. She was wearing an orange and white outfit with a matching bow clipped into her light brown hair. As they walked past us the child’s father had to pull her hand as she stared backwards at us. We walked through the doors and the pressure was on. We walked through the make-up isle to ease into it because we knew from our former visits the make-up section was not very busy. There were two girls who must have been thirteen or so, barely even old enough to wear make-up themselves. They looked at us and we could tell they felt uncomfortable and less than a minute or so they left the isle.
We made our way to the grocery aisles. A lady passing by said a little bit too loudly, "What are those girls wearing?" We kept walking and another lady actually stopped to stare at us as we passed. I felt embarrassed, and maybe even ashamed. For the next fifteen minutes we experienced people snickering, staring, laughing and pointing. " I think countercultures should feel different" stated Sally, "because they are different." Yes, countercultures are different but sometimes they don't choose to be. Some people in the United States are from other countries who wear or do different things. I realized how much Americans judge one another and it made me sick. It made me think of all of the times I may have looked at someone a half of a second too long. I was ashamed of myself and it made me embarrassed. "People were treating us like we were five hundred pounds!" bluntly stated Amy as we walked out. Now I can see why people just wear what everyone else wears and does what everyone else does. It’s more than just fitting in and self confidence. It is about how people pick on you or make you feel like less of a person. When I asked Ben if he wanted to be a counterculture he said “I wouldn’t want to be a counterculture because people judge you just by looking at you, and like your librarian always said, never judge a book by its cover!"