Pop Culture

I guess I'm getting old, because here are a few things I just don't get:

• Lady Gaga. I just don't get it. She looks like she should work at a strip club or hang out on a street corner, and while her music is sort of fun, there's nothing spectacular or memorable about it, except for the X-rated content in the videos. I've listened without watching the associated video, and I just don't think there's a lot of talent coming through beyond her of-the-moment music/lyrics and her shock-value videos/costuming. Perhaps I'm missing something?
  
• Tattoos. Do people realize that you age? And that when you are 60 and wrinkly (or 35 and wrinkly if you're living a particularly hard life), they're going to look stupid? Well, most of them anyway. Depends on what and where. Don't get me wrong, I've seen some fantastic tattoos, but really, after a certain age, most people (men or women) just don't carry them off well.
  
• Crocs. Aside from being hosable gardening shoes, what's the point?
• Blue and brown together. I do not like this color combination. It's different than my dislike of the colors pink and black. I've seen use of pink and black where I appreciate the color (say, in some combinations of pink and yellow together that are really lovely, or orange and black for use on halloween, things like that). But the combination of blue and brown? What gives? I find it dingy as a combination. It screams outdated to me, just as a harvest gold refrigerator and avocado stove would.
• Older women (50+, in some cases 40+) in long hair. Makes most of them look older. Sure, Michelle Pfeifer can do it and get away with it, so can a few other stars. But let's face it, they have things that most normal women don't. Many of them, due to their careers, have had some sort of plastic surgery to modify the natural sagging that happens to a face (and can be accented by long hair), and they also have a team of stylists every time they're seen in public for any event, whether it's on the news, or something to do with a movie. Have you ever seen those pictures of celebrity women in public with no make-up wearing mom-clothes or Saturday-working-in-the-yard-running-errands clothes? Trust me, they look just as bad as anyone else. But I see a lot of women who both wear their hair too young, AND dress too young. You see them from the back and they look fantastic. You get an expectation of a lovely smooth-skinned young thing in your mind. Then they turn around, and they may not look bad for their age, but as their hair and clothing are more geared toward someone 20 years younger, it comes as a shock, and you think they look horrible. A tweak here or there would mitigate that shock, and still have them dressing in a very trendy fashion. You don't need the short, old-lady hair. But you can't wear it like you did when you were 20, either.
  
• Fear of getting old. While we're talking about people trying too hard to hold on to their youth. Aging is certainly not for the faint of heart, but seriously: if we're lucky, we all do it. Doing it gracefully should be the goal, not avoiding it altogether.