Fitting In

I can’t remember ever wanting to look like anyone else.  I have always just wanted to be unique. Sure, I had a doctor blouse (remember them in the sixties–prompted by Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey?) and the later refinement of the the doctor blouse, the sissy blouse–merely a doctor blouse with ruffles added?  I also wore pedal pushers, madras and short skirts–all in their day.  But the purpose never was, as I recall, to look like everybody else.  It was because I liked the fashion, but wanted to be unique within that fashion.

In the past thirty years or so I haven’t really even known what the fashion was.  I just saw clothes and bought them because I liked them and they didn’t make me look fat! (Even if I was–ha.) I have friends who come to Mexico and buy the wonderful embroidered blouses, then tell me when they go home they never wear them because they just don’t seem “right” in Wyoming or even California!  This seems so weird to me.  If I like certain clothing, I wear it wherever it is climate appropriate.  Why would anyone want to wear what everyone else is wearing?

The same goes for hairstyles.  I don’t know what is “in.”  I just know when I have a hairstyle that makes me look like how I feel. Certain haircuts make me feel “right” and I am happy for the time it takes for them to grow out and for me to get a new haircut that isn’t right–such as the one I have now. I think perhaps this is why I never quite fit in anywhere until I went to a culture so foreign that I wasn’t expected to fit in and was accepted because I was different.  Somehow, the American culture has never quite evolved to the point where those who are different are accepted.  Perhaps that’s why I have always preferred to live abroad.

(The picture is from my New Years Eve poor taste party several years ago. I’ve staged these in three countries–so much fun.  In addition to dressing as tacky as possible, everyone brings a dish they are secretly embarrassed that they love, in spite of the fact that it isn’t “in style.”  Mac and cheese and homemade Twinkies and hostess cupcakes were three of the dishes.  Can’t remember the rest. If anyone pictured or who was there remembers, please comment!)

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Style Icon.” Describe your personal style, however you’d like to interpret that — your clothing style, your communication style, your hair style, your eating style, anything.