Ballerina Revival: Hot Topic shoppers exchange studded belts for frills

I was once strolling down the mall, looking for nothing in particular. After finishing the last of my pretzel bites, I proceeded to do some window-shopping. I passed a few stores without incident, but when I hit Hot Topic my stroll fizzled down to nothing. What I saw in the store window made me want to regurgitate my Blue Raspberry Icee all over the shiny tiled floor.

They were tutus. Tutus. Similar to what a seven-year-old girl missing two front teeth would wear for a Christmas dance recital choreographed to the musical stylings of Mozart and Beethoven.

I mean, I’ve seen some ridiculous trends in my day. Like multicolored clip-on hair extensions, so every girl can experience the pure exhilaration of having a strip of synthetic, hot pink hair clipped to their scalp (but only temporarily, of course).

But really, a tutu? I figured a majority of teenage females had experienced their share of forced ballet lessons, and had finally whined and moaned enough that their mother finally agreed to cancel their childhood ballet-prodigy careers and let them stay home and watch Cartoon Network on Tuesday nights (At least that’s what happened to me.) So wouldn’t it be expected that most teenagers would be sick of and/or are too cool for tutus?

Apparently not, because even as the thought crossed my mind that these tutus could never possibly sell and would end up shoved together on the rack at some second-rate Halloween store or, more preferably, resold as house-breaking tools for new puppies, I began to notice that some girls at the mall were actually clothed in these abominations.

Some of these tutus were rainbow-colored, some hot pink, others a simple pearly white. The girls also wore the tutus in different ways: redundantly over pants, combined with striped stockings, or bravely all by their lonesome. But the girls all had one thing in common: they looked like they just got back from a dress rehearsal of The Nutcracker.

Did they secretly yearn to become ballerinas? Perhaps they felt a deep regret over cancelling their ballet lessons and were now trying to reclaim a segment of their lost childhood by pulling a tutu over a pair of ridiculously tight pants like an afterthought. Maybe their repressed ballet-related urges had now found a channel through which to be expressed.

There was also a chance that some of the girls thought they were being stylish, but they were blatantly mistaken.

To make matters much worse, a majority of the tutu-clad teens were also sporting clip-on neon hair extensions. This immediately reminded me of something not typically associated with Hot Topic or the clothing purchased from there: Barbie dolls. In fact, if any of these tutu-wearers were asked anything about Barbie dolls or ballerinas, they would most likely not reply positively. But when compared side-by-side, the similarities are overwhelming: Barbie has colorful removable hair extensions and ballerinas wear tutus, and so do these stylishly-misled youths.

So I ask, what will be the next deviously-devised fashion trend sent up from the depths to pollute the style of our teenagers? Can it get any worse?