Since the start of this academic year I’ve noticed a surprising trend. Schoolgirls, specifically high school girls, seem to frequently wear their backpacks on their front. This trend seems completely absent from high school boys, or indeed boys in general.
Where the heck did this come from? Is this an international thing, a Kiwi thing, a Wellington thing, what? Has it been around a while and I just missed it?
Why are they wearing their backpacks like that? They have to be less comfortable worn that way. I’m familiar with people wearing backpacks reversed to make it hard for thieves and pickpockets, but this is Wellington New Zealand, and that kind of crime is vanishingly rare here (I’ve never even heard of a single case).
Is it just a random trend that has swept through the community? Did Paris Hilton do it one time? Schoolgirl status-competition trades heavily on appearance, and surely backpack reversing can’t be a cool look, can it?
Cal suggested that perhaps girls wear their bags like that because their school uniforms don’t have pockets, so they have to keep their cellphones in their bags, so they make their bags easily accessible by wearing them reversed. I don’t find that explanation very convincing.
There are more than a few teachers of the aforementioned high school girls among my readers – can any of them enlighten me?
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I just blogged about how I have been observing high school girls. There goes my career in politics.
11 thoughts on “Reversed Backpacks”
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Dunno ’bout reversed backpacks for schoolgirls, but it has been a trend on both school girls and school boys for a couple of years now in Edinburgh to have their backpack straps as long as physically possible , so that often the bottom of their packs are banging the back of their legs as they walk and the staps frequently fall off their shoulders – again surely not comfortable and I guess it must be a fashion thing.
Having said that, I have always associated the reversed backpack that you describe as a kiwi thing, but ONLY in a backpacker-carrying-more-than-one-rucksack-at-once scenario.
I think it’s so that they can access stuff within their bags more easily.
Or maybe it’s a clever ploy to appear pregnant and thereby discourage amorous teenage boys?
When I was at Welly Girls it was unacceptable to wear your schoolbag on both shoulders, or wear Roman sandals. The coolest school uniform was the stuff that had been replaced (6th-form skirts, teal raincoats, tunics if you could get them). In particular, it was absolutely unacceptable to wear the so-called s**t-brown raincoats that had replaced the teal ones in about my 3rd for year. Blazers were also a sign of the nerd. in winter one wore white ankle socks squished down as far as possible, but still visible, over the top of one’s tights. None of this seemed peculiar at the time. These things have changed many times over the subsequent (nearly 20…ouch) years
Teenagers, girls in particular, develop peculiar social norms. People who don’t conform to the norms are either ostracised or set the next trend according to an equally peculiar set of criteria, that I never figured out (being one of the ostracised early on, and then kind of tolerated on the fringes until I met the other fluffies in 4th-5th form).
Karen – I can instantly tell from your comment that you are roughly the same age as my sister, because those are the exact fashion crimes she warned me against prior to her career at Wellington Girls College. By the time I got there, Blazers became cool, Roman Sandals became cool, and only nerds wore socks over their tights.
The one thing I did find weird was the trend of stuffing the fat end of your tie inside your shirt so only the thin end hung out. People tormented nerds by pulling out the fat part of their ties. By the time I was in sixth form though, it was once again ok to wear your tie fat side out.
Sorry, that should be *my* career at WGC…
I rarely see reverse-backpacks up here in Kapiti. Only when the wearer is actively getting stuff out of a bag from a standing position is such bag-wearing to be seen.
I eagerly await this backwater outpost catching up with your hip, urban ways, and will report back as soon as I see evidence of this New Wave of Bag Wearing.
I think it is for two reasons:
1) To access the things in the bag whilst walking – bag of chips, phone, money etc. Most of the frontwards bags I see are when the girls are walking home, rather than round the school.
2) Having been a *slightly* overweight teenager myself, (and now an overweight 30-year-old!), the bag is a useful ‘muffin’ cover when worn in front. To an observer in front, anyway.
Do I need to explain what a ‘muffin’ is?
The frontwards bag thing is marginally practical (except of course the bags are not designed to be worn that way) but from my perspective is mainly a fashion thing. That said I haven’t seen it in London (except for a few European tourists at train stations/in the tube). So perhaps NZ is on the cutting edge of something, or the fashion has arrived from the US which NZ is far more susceptible to following.
Reaching back to my school days, the whole wearing your bag on one shoulder was a stupid fucking idea. What with having no locker and too many books to carry to and from school, my right shoulder still is less stable than my left due to my preference of ‘wearing’ my bag one shouldered. Anyone else out there bugger their shoulder for fashion?
And ~m your career in politics is already shot by the literary freedom you enjoy – I wouldn’t trust a politician that has as rampant a use of sex and the dreaded c word in their writing!
Talking to a younger friend of mine, he assures me that the reverse backpack fashion started amongst “the homies” about four years ago and has since moved to become a more generic “yoof” thing.
Scott – fascinating. Did the reverse-wearing have a rationale, however tenuous?
i.e. did your contact say it was for easier access to backpack contents?
And was it always a girls-only thing?
Apparently it’s unknown out here in the Hutt, as well as in Kapiti where Matt commented from.
Yeah, he said it was a girls only thing, and when he was at school three years ago it was only done by, as he said, “the homies.”
As for why, he doesn’t know. I should probably mention that he is, um, a he and not a “homie.” He’s actually a nerd. Which is, of course, an entirely different species.