Every year horror-stricken freshmen women arrive on campus and realize they’ve all made the same terrible mistake.

That backpack you ordered, THE NORTH FACE RECON SE BACKPACK RAGE BLUE ASTER POP PINK, the one that all your girls back home said was sooo you, the one that totally would, like, make a statement, is patently commonplace at Wash U.

I see this happen every year, and I’m tired of it. I hate to see the abrupt pain behind what should be starry-eyed freshmen eyes. I hate seeing a perfectly good North Face bag — the paragon of backpack technology — dipped into a patiche of blinding paint. Mostly, I hate the fact that THE NORTH FACE RECON SE BACKPACK RAGE BLUE ASTER POP PINK is a perennial campus blemish. It’s kind of like an unseemly birthmark, except it need not be permanent.

That’s why I’m here to say stop. Stop using this backpack. Stop ordering this backpack (it currently seems to be back-ordered, praise the Lord). Just don’t do this to yourself, to me, to all of us. Perhaps this conceit will fall on deaf ears. But Steven, you say, I’ve already ordered THE NORTH FACE RECON SE BACKPACK RAGE BLUE ASTER POP PINK. It speaks to me. It literally has the word “rage” in it! It’s got all my favorite colors: hot pink, purple, sky blue, neon vomit. It even has a comfortable padded airmesh back pane. For ventilation, you see. It’s perfect.

No, burn it. Burn the thing. I’ll even do it for you and then personally drive you to the Galleria for a suitable, one-colored replacement.

I don’t claim to be a style guru by any means, but I know a hideous clustercolorfuck when I see one. And apart from its decadence, you rocking THE NORTH FACE RECON SE BACKPACK RAGE BLUE ASTER POP PINK, with its disgustingly common campus presence, doesn’t make you original at all. Lose the backpack, and let your life and actions speak for your own sense of individuality.

Or just wear a hat. You’re better than this.

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