A Beanie Baby to The Row pipeline
LESS JUDGEMENT, MORE FUN.
When I was in third grade, I was really into POGS. Remember those? If you’re unfamiliar, they were these little cylindrical milk caps that you stacked into a tower and threw a heavier cylindrical object onto, called a Slammer. It wasn’t the most mentally stimulating volley in the world, but the game was beside the point. The point was really to collect POGS.
And did I. I asked for them for every Christmas and birthday. I begged my Grandfather to drive me to the comic book store to buy them. I traded or played my friends for new ones. I had a POG maker and officially-branded POG merch with little plastic slipcases for displaying and protectingmy collection. They were all I thought about. POGS were life!! Until they weren’t, when a girl in my class told me I was weird for playing with the boys so much.
Around fifth grade, I became obsessed with Beanie Babies along with every other child in America. I read Beanie Baby magazines with voracity. I lurked collector’s websites and planned my next get, certain the things would skyrocket in value one day. My Godmother had a wholesale account with Ty, and one day walked into my house with a literal Hefty bag full of the things and dumped them on the floor. I think I blacked out. I was in the big leagues now, holy shit! I carefully catalogued them and gave them tag protectors. I went on AOL chat rooms. My Mom dutifully drove through McDonald’s over and over when they issued “teeny beanies” in Happy Meals. I was the coolest kid in the fifth grade for my enviable collection. I was in deep. And then I grew out of it just as fast when a boy made fun of me for proudly propping a Princess Diana bear on my desk.
Even as a younger kid, I was obsessed with my Barbies, especially this incredible dream house my sister and I had, which I was always redecorating. I played with it well into fifth grade, but in secret shame, because one little girl I always hung out with told me Barbies were for babies and that still playing with them was for losers.
In seventh grade, I started a email newsletter on AOL called Smudge, which amassed around 15,000 subscribers on a mailing list I managed by hand on a Word doc. It was for girls my age, and we covered all the pressing matters of the time: Britney Spears, NSYNC, shopping, boys, Mary-Kate and Ashley movies, with which I was obsessed. I had personality quizzes, comics and even interviewed Hanson.
I taught myself programming languages and graphic design as a kid! The thing absolutely thrived in an ecosystem of what we called e ‘zines. And I ran the whole thing completely in secret, because knowing that much about the Internet wasn’t kosher with my pack of cool girls and would get me made fun of in school for being a computer nerd.
Publishing Smudge and collecting those things filled me with joy. I loved learning about them, hunting for them, brainstorming, making friends and finding communities around them. Who cares that both collections probably rest in a box in my Mom’s garage somewhere? Or that AOL is DOA? The monetary value didn’t turn out to be the point. The point was the fun of it.
Being a nerd, geeking out, swan diving into the fandom, being amped to learn about something new — just really loving something for awhile — there is nothing better. But every time, all it took was one snide little jerk to shit on my innocence for me to slam the door on something I loved.
I’m obviously older now, but that feeling has never left me: of being totally geeked out about something I think is awesome, and then the algorithm serving me someone who thinks I’m stupid for liking it.
As a self-made adult with an established company and grown-up money of my own, my POGS are now clothes. I am really nerdy about clothes. I obsess over how they are designed, composed, and marketed, how they fit into my life and how I will style what I buy. And The Row makes clothes for the nerdiest of nerds. So here I am, still writing a newsletter about Mary-Kate and Ashley.
Seeing those blue jellies come down the runway made my heart leap last fall, and the anticipation of getting to wear them was just as fun as finally sliding into them.
I grew up, but I didn’t abandon that third-grader hoarding her hologram slammer. I’m doing the same thing I did as a kid, just on a larger scale: finding a community of people who like kick pants and Phoebe Philo and mesh and get a jolt from the same nerdy stuff I do.
So if you want to tweet or blog or spin 1200 words of rage bait, then by all means, engage in fashion negging. I’ve long ago stopped letting others yuck my proverbial yum. If you need me, I’ll be here in my jellies and kick flares, having fun.
I do want to clarify that I think there's a difference in negging/judgement and smart criticism. I don't feel entitled to anyone's favorable opinion. I'm open to critique, I don't think you need to like the thing I like. Most of the notes I'm reading who don't like this post seem like they didn't really even read the whole thing before firing one off -- the point here is maybe just let me have my fun and I'll let you have yours! Even if your fun is making fun of me :)
This is so relatable. It’s about finding our people that don’t think we are crazy for collecting the things that we love to geek out over and sharing our passions. Never had this in my personal life which is why the internet is so cool to find a community that gets it!