by Eva van Loon

If my daughter remembers anything her mother ever said, it will probably be this oft recited couplet: “Fashion is bunk and make up is junk.”

Notwithstanding that pronouncement, for the past decade I quite enjoyed watching her experiment with make up both on and offstage. Not only that, I subsidised, to a painful extent, her quirky forays into the world of fashion.

On the latter front, she was unnaturally kind. She appeared to adopt parental scorn of that amazingly passive post-modern phenomenon I so loathe, the human billboard on two legs—the only clothes she wore with slogans on them were political Ts, like the “Shrubs Prohibited” and “I am a Terrorist” T-shirts which won her a scholarship from the American Civil Liberties Union. Attagirl!

She invented an amazing variety of holes in otherwise serviceable clothing, adopting a goth-punk-screw-you style of dress rebellion that harked back to my hippy youth, when we wore what we pleased (but paid a price) as long as our hair was long. From time to time she even wore un-holey but handmade items from Latin America, India, and Thailand, honoring places on this earth where people still make clothes by hand. It all drove me crazy while simultaneously delighting me. The kid had force and vision—why complain?

I remember a poignant but chilling moment in our joint history, when we returned to Canada after a month in Dominican Republic, which had been celebrating the quincentary of Columbus’ landfall in 1992. My daughter, then six, and her parents came home garbed in bright, cheerful clothing and carried along an incredible number of original bright, cheerful paintings into the Toronto airport.

It was like disembarking into the set of a zombie film. We stood open-mouthed at the sight of our fellow Canadians, uniformly wrapped in gray, black, or—for the rebellious among them--dark brown. OK, so it’s cold in Torauma in January…but what’s with this head-down, avoid-touch-and-contact-at-all-costs routine? Is this some kind of countrywide fashion statement?

Look around, right here in apolitical, peaceable Powell River—what with all the black and grey and brown? Canadians have more choice in clothing than virtually any people in the world and yet we are more drab than sparrows! Hasn’t anybody heard of that old book, When I Am Old I Shall Wear Purple? After all, this really is a Country for Old Men (and Women)! Where’s red for passion? Cobalt blue for the spiritual path? Orange for sassiness? Forest green to match our beloved trees? Come on--show your true colors!

As for the young, what’s your excuse for this drab, ugly body décor? Leave the grey and black cynicism to the old folks—show us your hearts and smarts, your energy, your courage to be you!

Show your courage. Show us colors to survive the hard days ahead.

Who knows? You might find a feisty old broad in purple working right beside you.