Day #018: Signs of the Times
The strongest, most dramatic changes in fashion have usually had a pretty good war to go along with them. The problem comes when people stop caring about the war going on. Fashion becomes static and statements become even more meaningless than they already are. Such was the marketer’s theory when they decided to take 10-cent firecracker fodder than turn them into 10-dollar novelty jewelry. Even better, the profits could come from both sides – those on the right could say that they were being patriotic and honoring the brave warriors on the front lines; those on the left could say it was a silent protest against the treatment of the fighting forces as no better than finger puppets. Either way, there was money to be made.
The trend was soon catching on all over the world after a prominent movie actress showed them off on a Chinese television variety program. Being a devout liberal, her sincere speech through the filter of Chinese subtitles moved the people on the streets of Beijing who were soon to upload it to youtube through their firewall proxies. The footage went viral literally hours after it aired and soon enough, schoolgirls in Thailand were sporting little green men on their little tanned fingers. This did cause some problems to Japanese tourists when they took trips to Dubai or Tehran, which led to embassy advisories against bringing certain types of jewelry.
In all, the trend lasted all of four months in its origin as the war starting fading in the background of the public consciousness again. The jewelry would be mostly forgotten outside of retrospective internet articles and television specials on the year and decade in review. Likewise, Asia, Europe and Africa’s craze for it would soon subside but it would be still be something that tourists would note with curiosity on the streets of Seoul or Shibuya, usually proceeded by a blog post or tweet to the effect of “WTF?”