50 Subjects I'm Still Figuring Out
#50 - I want to release 50 hang-ups (or accept them or ponder them until it's time to move on. it's a free-form kinda thing).
So for #50, I will start with something easy-- leave my Mom or motherhood or rape trauma or things like that for later, out of fear I will inadvertently stall my efforts-- and work out where I stand.
50. Hmm. Clothes.
I remember being part of some forums in my 20s where people would regularly refer to a woman as being "mutton dressed as lamb," and I remember feeling like that would probably be me one day, that I would have to prepare myself for people's disapproval. I have always liked shorter skirts and sundresses and high heels. I couldn't imagine a time I would suddenly start looking good (or feeling good) in sensible sweaters, handsome scarves, or even that business attire that makes a certain type of woman look chic and powerful but makes me look severe and matronly in a rather frumpy sense, even when it's tailored right. I don't care about looking "sexy" to anyone, not really, but I associate sundresses with my personality and my optimism (god knows I will dress for sunshine even when it isn't there, and you can take that HOWEVER you want to, and it will be accurate).
I know ladies my age are supposed to have sensible haircuts and cover up unsightly fat or whatever. I'm fat as hell these days, and I dislike how I look wearing the clothes I prefer... but I dislike the WHOLE WORLD when I wear stupid "age-appropriate" jeans and tops and the usual fare that comes for women of my build. (ugly prints, shapeless shit.) If I lost the body mass I hope to shed, I would go right back to wearing a bunch of traditionally-Juniors style clothes. I still like bunnies and ribbons, for god sake. I want long princess hair and pink dresses with scallops and lace, and I probably will when I'm seventy. I've been me, in some ways, since I was three... and I used to be scared that meant I was stunted somehow, that something was wrong with me. (Honestly, no. Stopping myself for an honesty check. I didn't think that. I just figured others absolutely would, and I was afraid I was missing something about myself that others could pinpoint as crazy or immature or damaged.)
These days I figure, I just never really cared about what I was supposed to like as a girl, as a child, as a "insert marketable category or social construct here." I was ALWAYS going to be a person who liked pink stuff, flowers, bunnies, bows, lace, sunshine, mermaids-- whether I was a boy, a girl, agender, three years old, eighty years old, etc. Realistically, I'm so irreverent and subversive in some ways, I probably would have doubled down and liked that stuff MORE if I had been told I couldn't like it.
Which... actually, I guess is what I'm doing at 41 yeas old now.
Bring on the knee socks and the ponytails, and you can KEEP your stupid sexualization of the things I like. I don't need it to make sense to anyone but me. I just wish it did.
Those last two sentences are my whole entire ding-dang life.