Manhattan College, Home of the "Generic Guy"

One of the first things I noticed at my college within the first few weeks is how almost every guy at my college looks alike.


No, I do not mean they look like exact clones of each other. But a lot of them do have the typical traits in their appearances.

(Please, don't argue with me on this one. It seems pretty undeniable to me.)

A few weeks back, my friends Kat, Kit, and I were sitting on a bench near Smith, and Kat and I were calling out the generic and the non-generic guys as we saw them.

"Generic." I said.
"Which one?" Kat asked.
"Red hoodie, with the baseball cap."
"Oh, yeah." She agreed. "Definitely."

Who is the "generic guy"?

Generic guy is white. He has brown hair and brown eyes (but he also may have blonde hair and blue eyes, or blonde hair and brown eyes, and so on...). His hair is not cut in any particularly special way. He often wears a baseball cap, or a hood, or both. In the summer time, he wears a white wifebeater with denim shorts. Or a nondescript t-shirt with basketball shorts. On Thursday nights, he most likely drinks and parties with his friends. He comes home on the weekends periodically so he can eat normal food and have his mom do his laundry. He listens to whatever music is playing on Z100. He wears Nikes and drinks Gatorade. If you saw him walking by with his friends, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart.

There are also sub-categories of generic guys as well, like guys that all have the same hairstyle. The main guy hairstyles I see on campus are the shag and the normal. There are also plenty of guys with spikey hair. And for the guys in the ROTC, they have buzzcuts. So there.

A main thing with generic guys is that their personalities tend to be generic as well (I'm referring to the previous example, not the hair one.) I look at these guys and I wonder, is there any dimension to them at all? Any passion? Any art? Or are they just living the day-to-day, sleep-in-go-to-class-play-video-games routine? And then pizza at Locke's. I wonder....

So who is the non-generic guy?

Well, that's another blog entry, for another day.

Manhattan College students--the deadline for Manhattan Magazine has been extended to December 11th. Please submit any poetry, artwork, photographs or short stories to manhattan.magazine@gmail.com