That's the message driven into Japanese students. She swiftly draws an invisible line around each calf with a lipstick-sized tube and hikes up the thick white socks slumped around her ankles. No, sock glue. She says a few touches with an adhesive stick are sufficient to keep baggy socks in place for several hours. The glue washes off with soap, water and a little elbow grease.
Oversized socks are more than just another fad in a land of quirky obsessions.
This willingness to flout the rules for the sake of being hip sets today's generation apart from predecessors, who accepted the personality-stifling garb as an obligatory rite of passage. Teachers enforce dress codes by performing random spot checks on everything from skirt length to underwear color. But some girls are taking advantage of a loophole in the regulations, which do not set out what kind of ankle socks should be worn. Donning baggy ones and then hoisting them up to change their look after school hours is a simple and effective way of thumbing your nose at the system. They have their own coded language to keep outsiders at a distance.