Hot New Trends: Why Feel the Need to Follow Them?

Do What You Like, Not What Everyone Else is Doing

Is anyone else out there bothered by this blatant sheep herding, when magazines, websites, TV networks, and even my small local garden center publishes a list of what is currently "Hot" and what is so totally "Out"? We're not in high school anymore, people. What's "in" and what's "out" shouldn't concern us anymore. We should buy or wear what we like, not what someone else tells us we should like. Throw off the chains of the fashion police who tell us that we'll be hopelessly out of fashion if we wear the same shoes as last year, or, according to my small local garden center, have only flowers in our garden!

Everywhere you go, you see lists of what's "hot" right now. To me, that's a convenient list of things to avoid. Hot baby names? Avoid them like the plague! Or your kids will go through what I went through, having several kids in the same class with the same name. It usually works out okay, but you always have to use your last initial, too. But forget it when a substitute teacher is there.

Other "What's Hot" lists to use as things to avoid perhaps include Hot Vacation Destinations (who wants crowds?), Hot Fashion (who wants to wear what the person next to you is wearing?), Hot Hair Styles (who wants to look like everyone else?), Hot Make-up Trends (if you decide to wear make-up, use colors and styles that look good on you), Hot Food Brands (eat what is healthy and what you like!), or Hot Baby Gifts (babies love cardboard boxes as much as a $100 toy).

Never having had the money nor the inclination to follow popular trends in school (and having completely the wrong hair for any trendy hair style), I try to stay away from hot new trends. I can't afford the trends that I think are fun (e.g., electronics). The fashion trends are just fabric sewn together in a way that I don't like anyway. Home decorating trends are out since I can't afford to redo my house each year, nor would I want to.

Even CNET.com has a "what's hot" section for their news stories. In my experience, that just means that those are the stories in which the masses are interested. I rarely agree with the masses, so give me what's not hot!