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How to be Queen of the Bop

Known for cringeworthy music, precarious outfits and floors sticky with the spilled vodka-cokes and lager of over-excited or over-drunk students, the bop is as much a part of Oxford life as libraries, boaties and the emergency hiding of Shisha pipes. Like it or loathe it, the bop looks to be one of those things which will not go away.

The name alone suggests that this is an institution which has been running for quite some time.  A quick search on that other Oxford staple, Wikipedia, reveals ‘bop’ as a “party or club night at many British universities” but I have yet to find a friend from another uni who uses the word.  We’ve all been there, ridiculed in our home towns for letting slip the word ‘bop’ in company.  “Bop?” they laugh, derisively, rolling the word around their mouths, “how…quaint.  Will there be ginger ale and a jive competition?”  And we laugh along, all the while cursing them as we explain that, in fact no, ‘bop’ is just a word for a college party and we really are very cool indeed.  Worse still is when mothers or more often grandmothers begin to smile distantly, their eyes glazing over in reminiscence of bops to which they were escorted back when the word ‘bop’ – as well as ‘yonder’, ‘thou’ and ‘ye’ – was still in common usage.  “Oh yes dear,” they say, their carpet slippers tapping away to a half remembered rhythm, “I remember I met your grandfather at a bop in the town hall.  He came straight up to me…I was a looker in those days, you know, everybody said so…and he asked me to dance and he took me by the hand and we did the lindy hop until nearly eleven when my father came to fetch me.”  And we nod along soberly, thanking our deity of choice that our bops aren’t like that and wondering what on earth the lindy hop might have been.
We have email these days and, sometime early in the term an email arrives containing the first bop theme.  Somewhere within the title the word ‘naughty’ appears.  Or perhaps ‘dirty’.  Or ‘undressed’.  Amongst these inevitable terms you find the actual theme and with it the realisation that you have absolutely nothing to wear. I mean literally having nothing suitable to wear, like Cinderella.

Once you have your theme, inventiveness is the key. Christmas bops, for example, bring out hoards of ‘Slutty Santas’, which, though I never complain too bitterly, were all overshadowed by a girl who came dressed as a present.  Resplendent in a large cardboard box, neatly wrapped and with a bow attached she may have struggled to get through the door and spent most of the night apologising for the way in which her outfit kept walking into people without her knowledge but at least she tried.  Take heed of her example: do not be tempted just to head for Primark or the Party Shop. Approach your bop costume as you would an exam paper: take a few moments to fully read the question and gather your thoughts before you dive in.  Try thinking outside the box…like going Back to School as a bike shed (illustrated).

Your costume, whatever it may be, should be designed and constructed with certain things in mind.  Firstly and most importantly you should not be over constricted.  Whilst dancing is not my forte and I have in fact spent most of my life thus far trying to avoid doing it in public – I am always tempted by the one-hand-clutching-an-ankle-and-the-other-behind-the-head-such-that-the-knee-and-elbow-meet-in-time-with-the-music move: always a crowd pleaser but for all the wrong reasons – but I once made the mistake of producing a costume with such limited arm movement that I could not get my drink to my lips without assistance. 

If you are inclined towards dance then you should curtail your drinking slightly to compensate. Funny to watch you may be, but your embarrassing antics will only be a source of frustration to your friends as they are forced to select photos to add to facebook, subsequently tagging and captioning them all. Also, be aware that whilst air guitar may be fun and, in some situations even cool, there is a time and a place, and in the middle of an ever-expanding circle of startled onlookers, YMCA pumping out of the speakers, is neither. 

When it all comes down to it though, most people at the bop will be just as drunk, badly-dressed, badly co-ordinated and, frankly, uncool-looking as you anyway and those who aren’t haven’t tried hard enough to pass judgement, so just get in there and have fun.

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