Please Make Them Go Away

Happy holidays, folks, and best wishes for the New Year!

Before we close the year out, however, there's something I need to get off my chest and hopefully, off the bodies of some poor souls who may not know any better. Yes, I am talking about fashion don'ts here.

What follows are Martta's 10 Fashion Pet Peeves which I hope will meet a quick demise in 2006:

1. Gaucho pants. Worn mostly by women, these are pants that couldn't decide whether they wanted to be shorts, culottes, or cropped pants. Instad, they hang right below a woman's knees which, according to most fashion gurus, is NOT the most attractive part of the body, certainly not a place to which you want to draw the eye. I don't care if you are are God's most perfect mammal, these simply do not look good on any body type. Ever.

2. Belly Shirts on People with, uh, Bellies. I don't care if you have more rolls than an Italian bakery, but I don't need them in my face 24/7 when I'm walking down the street or dining in the food court at the Mall of America. I'm sorry, but unless you have abs on which you can bounce a quarter, you are a making a fashion statement that is just not working.

3. Low Rise Jeans On...Oh, Just See #2. As with belly shirts, if you have 52-inch hips with love handles, I'd love for you to stop wearing these. Nuff said.

4. Underwear as Outerwear. Uh, there's a reason it's called underwear, folks. It's meant to be worn UNDER your clothes. I don't care how cute your bra is, I don't need to be looking at your nasty-ass straps in public. And men, the pants-hanging-off-the-ass look is so five minutes ago. If I want to see prison garb, I'll visit Riker's.

5. Men Who Wear Hats Indoors. Three things go through my mind when I see a guy (who is NOT a professional baseball player) in a baseball hat worn indoors: 1. Bald 2. Loser. 3. Bald Loser. Ditto for grown men who wear ski caps all year round. Unless you are 11 years old and building a snow fort, lose the hat, Dude.

6. Pointy-pointy shoes. I thought the Wicked Witch was dead.

7. Nine-inch Nails. No, I'm not talking about the band, whom I love. It's those let's-see-how-long-I-can-grow-them-before-I-poke-someone's-eye-out nails. Everyone is wondering: "How does she, uh, wipe herself?" Surely, you want people thinking different thoughts when you first meet.

8. Cowel-neck sweaters. It's not much that they look bad, it's that yours truly can never drape them correctly. Finally, out of desperation, I just give up and buy a regular turtleneck. How DO you fold those suckers?

9. More Than Two Face Piercings. One or two, I can handle but any more than that, you become a hazard on a fishing boat.

10. Multiple Tech Items Attached to Your Person. I often wonder, when I see someone wearing a cell phone, Blackberry, iPod, walkie-talkie, if they were buried tomorrow, how long would their half life be?