Why So Serious?

 I’ve always been attracted to the tacky, garish and trashy. Lights beaming from a Vegas casino, the ping from the slot machines my siren call. I like how seedy places- dive bars, casinos, smoking lounges- imply a lack of supervision. There’s no one telling you to put your napkin in your lap, sit up straight, change into something more appropriate. It’s just you and your imagination, free to wander about aimlessly. Free to make a life that’s yours, no matter how self-deprecating, chaotic and self-destructive it is. You can smoke a cigarette at 8 in the morning, spend the night gambling, get blackout drunk at an airport and get kicked off the plane. Life’s weird, make it twist and turn just for the fun of it.

I spend slow days at work scouring depop for the kind of short shorts I dreamed of wearing in high school, the ones you see on Laguna Beach. They have no zippers, only a tie front to cinch the hips together. Now that I can walk freely around town acting like I don’t have any sense without being scolded by some sort of authority figure, I would let my butt hang out from those shorts with pride. I would complete the look with a baby tee, letting the fat from my hips fold over the sides. Add a pack of Marlboro reds, a Redbull, and ratty unbrushed hair to look like the ultimate gas station skank. 

It’s boring to discuss how one can become free from the constraints of society, although Virginie Despentes does it brilliantly in her Vernon Subutex trilogy, I must say. I don’t have the patience to cull together a random group of stragglers who somehow fit perfectly together who I can form some sort of wayward lifestyle with. But I can transform my entire life to trash. I can fashionably find a way to achieve the same deviation from society. I can create a silly little life that adds up to very little but provides me with a nourishment of the soul I can’t find in a more respectful lifestyle. 

I’m beginning to surround myself with fake designer bags I’ve tagged and splattered acrylic paint on. I use self tanner I bought on clearance at Target. I wear press on nails from Claire’s. I got my bleach blonde hair from a beauty supply store. I am an off-brand hot girl. I do wonder if all that bleach has gone to my head...

As I grow older I’m becoming less impressed by everything that glitters and shines. I’m suspicious of it, even. The reality I see is that everyone has a little slimy, sleazy, walking barefoot out of a trailer park grime to them. People who try to hide that are unsettling to me. You see this hint of trash come alive when even the people most careful about cultivating a high status aesthetic let their guard down. There’s bachelorette parties complete with slogan slashes, penis straws, or at the very least some kind of sickeningly pink drink. There’s trips to Canal street and Times Square, Vegas, Nashville, South Beach, Hollywood. There’s strip clubs, where the VIP (read: Married finance bros) throw all their money at the beautiful ladies working their asses off to pay rent. Somehow the strippers are seen as the ones with no taste… I see it as no coincidence that all the tourist hot spots can be the most gnarly. As Americans, we’re drawn to products, performances, and people that we find slightly disgusting, maybe even a little disturbing. There’s something satisfying about bearing witness to something that makes us go “Oh… no. This is awful. I can’t stop looking." I find all these slightly sickening aspects of life in America to be more and more appealing as my life begins to melt into something that feels more authentic to me. 

To me, allowing yourself to indulge in all things tacky is the ultimate form of resistance, self-reliance, and innovation. If you subscribe to all things expensive and bougie, everything becomes precious. One has to preserve it in its original condition for it to remain valuable. Imagine the horror of a scuffed pair of Louboutins! Oh no, no, no. For the things lacking class, there’s a chance for them to mutate, be destroyed and come alive again with some modge podge, glitter, and cheap paint. I might argue it’s the lowbrow, ugly, un-refined and utterly tasteless things- trashy celebrity magazines, reality TV, cubic zirconia, off-brand labels- that leave the most room for artistic inventions. 

Whatever happened to doing something just for the fun of it? Something stupid and not very worthwhile. Isn’t all the silly stuff we do throughout the day the most common form of existing under capitalism? Working? For what? So we can have an excuse to watch TV for four hours a day when we get home after a “long day?” TV? Why? So we can understand what someone who gets paid to write articles is talking about when they devote an entire critical analysis to Succession? There’s something so dreadful about feeling the need to take everything you indulge in so seriously when it’s all really just a form of escapism. When someone says there’s no way they could watch an episode of the Housewives franchise, I get embarrassed for them. It must be quite tiresome putting so much effort into finding TV shows that prove you’re a person of intelligence. At the end of the day, both my eyes and theirs are trained to a screen, listening to stories being told that fill us with joy. Turning down time into a hierarchy is an extremely silly endeavor that lacks whimsy. 

Sometimes I wonder what a nice girl like me is doing in a place that refuses to slow down, make some ugly art, have a cup of mint tea, play around with bleaching clothes and bleaching hair, listen to Aphex Twin, turn a tacky fake into something even tackier, buy clothes that look cheap and poorly made. It’s stupid and not very worthwhile, indeed. These days what isn’t? I told someone at a party that I like messing around with my film camera when I'm not at work. He said that was self-indulgent. At this time, I was going through a phase where I had my foot in the door with a lot of creative pursuits. I made projects with resin, took a glass blowing class, painted tee shirts and jeans, spray painted clothing and canvases with random sayings and designs. I really thought that made me an artist. I took it all so seriously, like it was necessary for me to do something with the projects I made. I especially felt the need to sell them, market them, make them worthy of being seen outside of my own house. Oh no! How very dull of me. All that time spent searching for ways I could get my "art" noticed was for naught, rightfully so.

As I sink deeper into this Lizzy 2.0 I'm keeping all my little projects, all my little obsessions with the obscene and grotesque parts of America, to myself. I'm hoarding fake designer bags, I'm taking photos of neon signs that say "Beer," I'm headed to Vegas so I can get a $10 tattoo and one of those horrible bedazzled hats that says "babygirl." I'm just happy that I even have hobbies to begin with. After all, I could spend the day watching serious television. What could be less authentic than that?