Hot (mess?)

Only Heidi Klum can look hot all the time.

Regardless of Heidi's activity--walking the runway, buying clothes, mowing the lawn--she always looks great. I am certain that when she wakes up in the morning, she looks good enough to be shot for the cover of any fashion magazine. When Heidi is pregnant (and that seems to be constantly), she somehow looks even more beautiful. Amazing.

However, the rest of us have to deal with the fact that we will not look hot every day. Hotness requires more than good genes--it also means good hair, skin, and body, stylistically cohesive clothing choices, and proper carriage and attitude. It is something that must be pursued daily--one day's achievements or failings have no bearing on the next.

I want to clarify something before you think I am as shallow as a Hills cast member. When I say "hot," I do not mean beautiful. Beauty is something intrinsic to all things that God has created because they reflect His beauty. Hotness is a quality created by the human fashion industry and culture. All people are beautiful and infinitely valuable--however, not all people are hot.

As an alternative to hotness, we have the hot mess. Urban dictionary defines hot mess as a situation "When one's thoughts or appearance are in a state of disarray but they maintain an undeniable attractiveness." The concept of the hot mess has been popularized by pop personalities like Christian Siriano on Project Runway. It is the opposite extreme on the hotness spectrum. Instead of being perfectly put together, a hot mess retains the magnetism despite his or her chaotic appearance or behavior.

To illustrate this concept, let me share my daily routine from past summer. Every day, I rolled out of bed, put on my matching sweatpants and sweatshirt, added a pair of chic black glasses and drove to the swimming. I ate my breakfast of blueberries and oatmeal with Diet Coke and got the cash boxes ready for the day. My sleep and caffeine-deprived brain buzzed at a low frequency and my poor early morning motor control caused me to knock things over a lot. I was a mess--the attention to detail and appearance made me a hot mess.

Later, after teaching a water aerobics class, I headed home and showered. I put in contacts, added high end cologne and moisturizers, spiked my hair, put on a nice, short swimsuit suit and grabbed my Hospers Swimming Pool zip-up hoodie and aviators. With my spinach and hard-boiled egg salad and iced coffee in my bag, I headed back to work. By the time I arrived at the pool, my brain was high functioning, and I quickly took control of the situation. Hotness achieved.

One star who regularly demonstrates the hot/hot mess paradox is Britney Spears. Britney is consistently hot in her music videos. She looks great, wears the right clothes, and has an appeal rivaled by few. However, in her personal life, Britney is such a hot mess. She pulls up to the KFC drive-through in her perfect SUV and perfect clothing and then gets a tub of chicken to stuff her perfect face. She shaves her head. She attacks paparazzi with designer umbrellas. Hot mess!

Hot is better than hot mess, but hot mess shows that you are at least trying. It is better to shoot for hot and stumble into hot mess than to only achieve the mundane.

Always be hot or a hot mess--never anything in between.

The death of fashion

Crocs are the first sign of the fashion apocalypse.

Now, I am usually a fairly relaxed critic when it comes to clothing choices. I believe that people should wear clothing that is comfortable, flattering, and reflective of how they want to be perceived. After watching seven seasons of Project Runway and countless episodes of What Not to Wear while on the treadmill during high school gym class (yes, each treadmill had its own television screen), I have developed a strong sense of what is permissible and what is a train wreck. Despite those show's aggressive points of view, I think I still tend to err on the side of leniency when it comes to fashion choices.

However, when it comes to plastic footwear, someone needs to put their foot down. If ever allowed, plastic shoes should only exist as flip flops and preferably only been worn to the beach. The horrendous croc, a diseased love child of the shoe and rubber boot, is the essence of tackiness and only appropriate to be worn when cleaning fecal matter out of a pig sty. I only know a few people who have actually cleaned up pig crap, and none of them wore crocs to do it.

What I find even more disturbing is the company Jibbitz, which creates "decorative attachments for the holes in Crocs sandals." You cannot make a mule a stallion by giving it an attractive saddle. Wikipedia has also informed me that the Crocs company produces a line called the "Fuzz Collection" with woolly liners permanently attached inside the holes in the Crocs that enable year-round use. Unacceptable. Adding cloth above, between, and below the parts of a bikini does not make it a gown fit for ball.

In one episode of the fashion-centric show Ugly Betty, style icon Wilhelmina Slater demeans herself by indulging in crocs. Her shallow, yet wise, assistant Marc quickly take initiative and throws away all of Willy's crocs. This action comes from love--both love for the person and love for aesthetics. If you have a loved one who owns these monstrosities, you need to go right now and help that individual by throwing the crocs away. In the case that this makes you feel guilty, simply go to Old Navy and buy them a couple of pairs of flips--they are plastic and only two for five dollars. The crocs need to be dumped.

After all, it is the right thing to do.