I like clothing. I like it a bunch, and not just because it gives me the ability to not be naked. If avoiding nudity was my only concern, I probably wouldn’t have as many clothes as I do.
For those of you who don’t know me very well, let me be really super clear on something here: I own a lot of clothes. A lot.
I used to not care so much about what I wore; I mean, sure, I liked getting dressed up, but if someone gave me money, I spent it all on books (or sometimes books and candy). Gifts of clothing at Christmas or my birthday were considered boring, and beneath my interest; they were quickly set aside in favour of more interesting packages. When my mother gave me money to go back-to-school shopping, I would spend as little of it as I could on a few shirts and a pair of jeans at Walmart, then save the rest for the more interesting stores.
Then puberty hit, and people started making fun of the way I dressed. Why? Because teenagers, that’s why.
Not only was I lacking in fashion sense, but I was also widely considered to be quite ugly. A classmate of mine took a sort of informal poll on the relative attractiveness of the girls in our class, and I rated lowest. Out of 28 classmates, only one (a girl named Cindy who was well-known to be the nicest person ever) had said that I was “sort of pretty”; everyone else, even (especially?) the boys had marked down “ugly” next to my name.
I tried to laugh it off, but underneath I was heartbroken.
I went home, cried, sassed my parents, ate some ice cream, cuddled my cat, scrawled in my diary, etc.
Then I decided that this was, in part, a solvable problem.
I couldn’t change my facial features or the basic structure of my body, of course, but what I could do was learn how to apply makeup and wear the correct clothes. In order to do this, I would have to figure out what the right ways to do these things was, because I honestly had no idea. I began to observe my classmates as if I were a cultural anthropologist; I made notes on what they wore, how they did their hair, and what shade of lipstick they applied. I bought fashion magazines and pored over their pages, cutting out pictures of the outfits I liked. We didn’t have a lot of money, so I started spending time at Value Village, Goodwill and the Salvation Army, digging through the racks for things that might look good, or fit me well.
I began replacing my wardrobe of printed pastel sweatshirts, track pants, babyish puffed-sleeve dresses and unflattering stovepipe jeans with slightly more grown-up attire. Back then, I wasn’t necessarily trying to be fashionable, or even dress particularly well; I just wanted to fit in and be able to disappear into the crowd. I gravitated towards basics like plain t-shirts and tank tops paired with jeans, khakis or a simple skirt. All I wanted was to be normal, because I thought normal meant that I wouldn’t be bullied anymore. I wanted to use clothing as a sort of protective armour, one that would make me look like an average high school student instead of someone with a target on their back.
By the beginning of university, I’d begun to wear things like vintage slips and old, beat-up leather jackets. I tied my hair back with old kerchiefs I’d bought for cheap in Kensington Market. My grandmother gave me an old coat of hers from the 60s, and I wore the shit out of it. I was starting to look kind of good.
While in Halifax, I was lucky enough to have two roommates who a) were approximately the same size as me, and b) had awesome, badass fashion sense. We instituted an open-closet policy, and having access to a sort of communal wardrobe gave me the chance to experiment with different looks without having to commit to them. I stopped wanting to look normal, and started wanting to look interesting. I learned to accessorize. I started putting outfits together in unconventional ways, and discovered that I kind of liked doing that.
Now, weirdly, some people actually consider me to be fashionable. It’s still a label that feels strange to me (and I often think it means “you sure do own a lot of clothes!”), and I don’t really believe that I dress particularly well. I still sometimes feel like my clothing is a disguise rather than an a form of self-expression. In a lot of ways, I’m still that skinny, ugly teenager who has no idea what to wear; I still study the way people dress (more out of habit, now, than out of necessity), and although I don’t cut pictures out of magazines anymore, I do pin copious amounts of fashion on Pinterest. But now, instead of feeling like this is something that I have to do in order to fit in, I do it because I’m looking for ways to stand out from the crowd. I also do it because I enjoy it.
Having taken the time to look back and write all this down, I’ve realized something: I took an experience that was ultimately really sad and tough and demoralizing, and out of that I developed a passion for something that I didn’t really care about before. Being bullied led me to explore and learn to love something that I might not have thought much about otherwise, something that still brings me happiness as an adult. And really, isn’t that the best possible outcome of a situation like this?
Anyway, here are a few things that are inspiring me these days. Maybe they’ll inspire you, too!
Tweed Skirt from Steven Alan
The Belle Jar 
The bullying bit made me sad, then the end bit made me happy. Love all your posts, so personal and honest!
Thank you! I also super love your posts!
This post makes me interested to ask this question, especially to someone who will in not too short order be choosing a school for her child: do you think that school uniforms actually do any good to curb this kind of bullying?
Obviously, no uniform in the world is going to eliminate kids/teens’ abilities to find something to tease others about; my high school had “theme” dress days a few times a year that were ample opportunity to display who had the cool clothes and who didn’t. Even within the constraints of a uniform, there always seem to be unwritten rules about which loafers are cool and which ones aren’t, whether the school v-neck sweater or the school cardigan is de rigeur. That was my high school, and I’ll 100% admit I figured out the fuck you to that system pretty early on – I always wore some sort of strange hand-made costume on theme dress days (when most of the school opted for the much safer wear-the-theme-colours-for-the-day choice).
I was grateful for the uniform – it was an equaliser, even with its failings, though it made it difficult to learn to dress myself when I got to CEGEP (no, I didn’t wear my one pair of jeans every day for the entire first year of school, no… )
I had a wide group of friends (the #1 inoculation against bullying), but it didn’t stop those friends from treating me kinda poorly – I was never invited to a single one my group of friends’ parties, and no one ever came to the ones I threw. No one mentioned me in my graduating year book, no one included me in their tables or limos for our prom. I was unpopular, even among the unpopular kids.