A topic near and dear to my heart: my interest in fashion and my deep vomitous aversion to lady clothes---and how I have been misjudged,mislabeled and misunderstood as a tomboy when in fact I am a girl girl girl.
When I was 10 years old, starting 6th grade, I was five foot three. By the end of that school year, I stood five foot eleven. I wonder if I even weighed 100 pounds.
So there I was, taller than all the women's clothing made in the world, barely eleven years old, size ten shoes, the largest size you could get in normal stores. Years before I was old enough for high heels, I was already too tall to wear them, and so, I never learned how to walk in 'em. This is how I started out! Way before I was even a teenager, I was severly limited in my options. I wore my school uniform by day, my field hockey, volleyball, and soccer uniforms after school, and on the weekends....ewwwww you don't wanna know. Wierd flood everything--and there was no "cropped", these were floods---hard to blame my mom when I grew 8 inches in 8 months---but there were flood pink pants, flood acid wash jeans, and flood black pants. Random sweaters from christmas,( ladies' medium, too wide and too short for the stalk of spaghetti that was me) and perhaps a pastel polo type of shirt from kmart or kresge.
Fast forward to when I "turned cool" --- I had a depeche mode Tshirt, a new order Tshirt, flood jeans and a jean mini skirt. Everything else has been forgotten. I had black chucks, black tights, and a few shirts from my boyfriend. Anything skirt or dress in my closet was so far out of the realm of what I considered even remotely attractive, modern, current, or wearable, that it soon became this thing that I was some kind of tomboy, masculine, manly, and my *family* liked to rub that in. but it wasnt really true! I had a CABOODLE (remember those, anyone??) of makeup, a zillion earrings, probably 8 perfumes, and --ahem-a decidedly not tomboyish underwear collection. Did my hate of FLATS and PUMPS and sickest of all--PANTYHOSE--really make me a mans man? I grape-sprunch sprayed my sun-in'ed bob while curling my eyelashes before dawn every single morning, blue eyeliner, turquoise eyeliner, peach gloss, pink gloss, dozens of nail polishes----black bikini, peach bikini----but no love for the LADY CLOTHES. Ever.
To me, since somehow, someway, there seemed to be
no cool feminine clothes in my world, maybe Madonna or Bjork or the rich kids had awesome stuff like I would have liked---but in reality, the skirt or dress came to symbolize deeply irksome events ONLY. Family portrait, Church thingamabob, Holidays, forced visitations to Moms Work or Sisters Recital. I felt so ugly so itchy so gross gross gross gross, in the hand me downs and borrowed 40 year old womens stuff that vaguely fit me (with safety pins) that it wasnt until my first dance that I wore a dress and felt ok. But a dance doesnt count.
Fast forward a long way...to my first grown up job. Age 19. Corporatesville.
Crap! Will I need lady clothes???? Im making $9.25 an hour---astounding money for me, minimum wage was 3.90 or maybe 4.15, but it was part time due to the fact that I was a full time college student, and so it was good money and yet not enough to get some sweet new wardrobe....so I kinda faked it. I wore black cotton tights. Black buckle Doc Martens. ($130 bucks in 1993 you better believe they were my only shoes!!) One little short black A-Line skirt from the "new store" Old Navy. Cardigans from the thrift store, and one white t shirt. oh--and a pink, purple and yellow swatch watch with a huge eyeball on it. Every single day. With a long silver necklace from contempo! hahahaha! Remember Contempo!!!?? Sheesh.
My older co-workers loved me, and said nice things like "you can get away with that", "youre so cute" and scarier things like "i dont know how you dont get written up", "that is bullshit"....and this was when NOBODY dressed the way they do at work now. It was 3 piece suits, power shoulder pads, hose, pumps, period. Except I did not.
I got married, loved my wedding dress. Duh. But beyond that it has been years and years of concert T's, jeans, chucks, with dreams of fun dresses, dreams of stripey tights, and kind of growing into the not working/wear what u want/but some image as a mom to work out stuff.......and well somehow here I am!
I still detest powder-smelling stinky stuffy itchy vile
lady clothes, but now I know what it is exactly that I detest. It isnt anything about being a girl. I have never ever been happoier to be a girl. Its about being ME. Maybe I will never have enough money to own all the outfits I dream of, and maybe creating them will be my only option. But the world of fashion has become ALOT more accessible, I see what the magazines are calling "Work jeans" and i am so curious to see if this is really true or not...but for something as near and dear to my heart as outfit-imagining, I will never be sad if purple hair, cherry barrettes, chuck taylors wth tights or shirtdresses in psychotic fabrics turns popular. because I love that stuff, and I would relish the idea of it being easier to obtain.
Somedays I am a girl and somedays I am a woman---but I never, ever want to be a LADY. Unless we are playing tea party. (But even then I might fight ya for dibs on being the cat or the baby or maybe even the grampa.)
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