I can’t be the only kid who went through a phase of being fascinated with pregnant women. Once I found out about the gross and magical metamorphosis that was happening inside their bellies, I wanted to talk about it with every pregnant woman my mother and I encountered. I also can’t be the only kid who was taught simultaneously that it is not polite to ask random women if they are pregnant. Pregnant women love to talk about their condition, so in hindsight, I can only assume my mother instituted this little rule because most of the women I confronted about their pregnancies were NOT in fact pregnant, but simply overweight. My preschool brain apparently could not distinguish the difference between fat bellies and pregnant bellies, and it led to many an awkward and embarrassing conversation.

Well, fast forward many years into the future, and a similar phenomenon stars to occur. As you get older, and increasingly out of touch with the current fashion trends of the younger generations, you may find yourself less and less capable of being able to identify what is going on in the world around you, and the accurate reasons as to why.

For example, growing up, there were a few unfortunate kids who were forced to wear their sibling’s hand me down clothes, even when the garments were out of style, or just simply didn’t fit them. Maybe the kid was a little bit more of a... larger person than their sister, and so pants that were intended to be loose and baggy suddenly looked tight, constricting, and bizarre. This is what I thought was happening for the first several years when skinny jeans arrived on the scene, and I can’t tell you how many young people I met and unnecessarily pitied, thinking they were being forced to wear their siblings old, ill-fitting, too-tight pants.

You’d think I be hyper-aware of the way young people inevitably gravitate to odd and unflattering trends, seeing as how I was part of a generation that included both Z CAVARICCI (we looked like genies from a bottle) and the grunge movement (we looked like homeless lumberjacks). But it’s like you grow up and you block all of that from your mind and forget that such infantile idiocy was ever possible.

In my 30s, just as I thought I was finally getting a grasp of what the Hipster movement looked like— fashion-wise, at least— my roommate and I moved to an affordable but sketchy part of town. The area was on the verge of gentrification, but it wasn't quite there yet. While the loft space did have the perfect, authentic look, with crumbling brick and exposed ducts, the neighborhood was a little too authentic, often with crumbling people and exposed private parts. Indeed, folks could quite frequently be seen urinating on the street, just below our balcony.

We overlooked a very interesting street. It was unique primarily because, further down, it led to a number of wildly disparate places. Nearby there were a lot of cool, funky, hipster bars, that much is true, but then there were also several encampments of homeless people situated in that very same direction.

Our balcony had a view which allowed us to see people approaching on foot for at least a mile down the road, but for a lot of that approach, their details would be blurry and out of focus. On so many occasions I would be checking out what I thought was a hot, sexy, hipster dude, only for him to get closer and realize— oh, this is actually a homeless person. My bad. Yes, this man is checking me out too, like I thought, but probably not because he thinks I’m cute, but because he wants some money or food. Huh. Maybe I didn’t quite have the grasp I thought I did on what this new hipster fashion looked like, not the nuances at least. In my defense, though, it’s not as if all the homeless people were pushing shopping carts, and conversely, it’s not as if all the hipster dudes were especially dapper in their interpretation of the current trends.

So, it was always a gamble to sit on the balcony and hornily check out pedestrians, and my roommate and I even developed a drinking game we called, “Homeless or Hipster?” I can’t remember the exact rules, but it involved placing imaginary bets, taking lots of shots, and many intellectual discussions about who we would and would not sleep with. If the line between homeless and hipster was blurry, then so, too, was the line between f*ckable and not f*ckable. You know, thanks to all the drugs and drinking, that was a very blurry period of my life in general. This also led to several discussions about who was and was not allowed to be brought inside our shared loft space at night.

Push that fast forward button one more time, to present-day Dallas, and my 40+ year old brain has stopped even trying to make sense of what is happening in the world around me, much less in the realm of fashion. If I see something that doesn’t add up or that I have no point of reference for, I just assume it must be fashion. Ever since I started seeing young men at the mall, with the entirety of their underwear exposed, because their pants are belted around their lower thighs... all bets are off. I’ve stopped even trying to pretend like I understand what’s going on. Now, if I see something out of the ordinary, rather than attempting to apply logic and deductive reasoning to the situation to determine whether it is fashion or true tragedy, I just accept it and move on.

Is this person doing a trendy, retro, 90s resurgence, or are they just impoverished and that’s what the thrift store had on offer today? Who cares. Keep moving. This person that's covered in bloody clothing? Is that fashion? Hard to tell. The realistic head trauma and crumpled bicycle next to them are a nice touch, though.

And finally, when this model showed up to yesterday’s photoshoot—with eyebrows the likes of which I had never seen— I was confused and paralyzed into silence. I was that little kid again, being scolded by my mother, for being unable to tell the difference between pregnancy and obesity. I was the horny adult male unable to immediately differentiate between homelessness and hipsters.

I wanted so badly to ask her about her eyebrows but was unsure if that would be impolite. Was this a new fashion trend, or did something go horribly wrong at the salon? And moreover, are these eyebrows something she’d be okay with me fixing in photoshop (is she maybe even HOPING I will fix them?) or are they by design— a defining, strategic element of her overall signature look?

It was hard to say, and I never could think of a way to tactfully breech the subject, so, as you can see, I’ve left them alone. I had visions of me, say, explaining to a pregnant model that, “I was able to get rid of all that unsightly, firm, and bulbous weight around your midsection, I Photoshopped it out, you’re welcome…,” only to have her horrified, because capturing her pregnant state was the entire point of the shoot.

In case you can’t tell, I am continuing to beat myself up for never finding the courage to ask this model about her eyebrows. I just couldn’t, though -- especially since I felt like she was already mad at me to begin with, for some unknown reason.

Although, the more I think about it, I might have just been feeling that way because her thin, scowling eyebrows were perpetually pointing downwards.