![]() The next thing I noticed was the wall of officially licensed band tees that spanned genres from pop-punk to hip-hop to thrash metal, and they sold CDs and vinyl, too-it was literally a subculture supermarket, and in Westerville, that was nothing short of a miracle. ![]() I aspired to dress-and live!-with that much creativity someday. ![]() I especially remember the manager, Jody, in all of her deathrock glory: artfully destroyed fishnet tights platform boots with buckles numbering in the dozens pin-thin, meticulously drawn on eyebrows. First, there were the employees: to someone who couldn’t find even one other misfit at school to share my weirdness with, they were downright inspirational. I took up the challenge, and was immediately enchanted. I had never heard of Hot Topic before I saw that disobedient red font standing out among the sedate logos of all the other stores, daring me to walk through its sewer-pipe-style entrance. So I took my angst to the only hang-out spot available to a 15-year-old in Westerville: the mall. My parents were pretty strict, and I wasn’t allowed online, except occasionally for schoolwork. At the time-this was 2000-I didn’t know there were blogs or internet communities where I could share my frustration with like-minded teenagers across the world. In my teen-angst-riddled mind, their preppy, pastel-hued, homogenous clothing choices were expressions of their bland, homogenous psyches. I started to hate everybody, and I latched on to their outward appearances as a symbol of how terrible they were, not even realizing the obvious parallel between my attitude about them and theirs about me. Offering me a maxipad in public became kind of a running joke among some of the popular girls. As the new girl, I was an easy target, and people mocked me for everything from my acne to one very traumatic accident involving my period, which I didn’t know was coming until it had seeped through to my cafeteria chair. I made literally zero friends that first year. I strolled through the hallways wondering, WTF is Abercrombie & Fitch? Soon enough, I found there were all sorts of unwritten rules that dictated everything from the type of car that was OK to drive (preferably a brand-new Audi) to the way you wore your hair (in a ponytail, sometimes with a ribbon in the school colors, maroon and gold). I felt like a complete stranger among my new classmates-because I was. It was painfully boring there I missed going to museums and the beach, and being around people who didn’t all look and dress exactly the same. I grew up bouncing between my mom’s house in Los Angeles and my grandparents’ apartment in Queens, but right before I started high school, my family settled down in a tiny suburb of Ohio called Westervillfe. ![]() I love Hot Topic, and have since the first time I walked through its arched industrial doorway in high school and entered a magical place where feeling misunderstood, which was my jam at the time, was actually cool. The store’s motto is “Everything about the music,” but what they probably mean is “Selling music-inspired apparel to a mass market is really profitable!” But you know what? I don’t care. ![]() I am well aware that Hot Topic is an emporium of diluted subcultures where nothing is so fiercely independent that it can’t be commodified. ![]()
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