Personal Adornment: a self reflection
Looking back at the values that I “established” earlier in this course, I had a really hard time connecting my personal style and the ways I customize myself to them.
I am a short, kind of curvy young woman. I have scoliosis, which greatly affects my physical appearance. I have short hair which is, at this point in time, at least three different colors of blonde, my natural sandy brown hair showing through.
I have small, dark eyes, to which I have always liked to black eyeliner and mascara to. Recently, I started wearing full make-up because I decided I wanted to see what that was like. I guess I thought wearing make-up like that would make me seem more conventional. Lots of girls wear make-up, to some extent it makes you seem more professional, which is a trait I’ve been trying to foster.
I recently (within the last year) have gotten several piercings. I didn’t actually get my ears pierced until I started college. When I was younger, I wanted them pierced so badly, but my dad said I had to wait until I was 13. By the time I actually got to be that age, I was too scared to do it. Then I decided I would never pierce them because I was a hippy child and I didn’t want any holes in my body to contaminate me. Now, though, I have three holes in each lobe, my cartilage in my right ear, a conch piercing in my left ear, and my nose is also pierced. At times, it is still quite strange to me that I went ahead and just got all those piercings.
From what I’ve observed around campus, these piercings are pretty common. I’d say that probably every 1 in 5 girls I’ve noticed has her nose pierced. Actually, when I got it pierced, which was a year ago, no one even noticed I’d done it. I guess it “fit my style so well” that most people had just assumed I’d always had it pierced. At the time, I was going through a weird, “I-have-to-change-things-drastically” phase. I felt crazy and daring; nobody really noticed, but I felt it and I guess it sort of helped.
I work at a women’s resale store, The Clothes Horse, and I’m in the middle of learning how to be a teacher, which requires a lot of professional attire, so my style of clothing is kind of in flux. I used to wear skirts and dresses and fun, colorful things all of the time. Now I’ve trimmed it down to dark jeans or black pants or dress pants, varying degrees of t-shirts in white, black, or grey, and a pair of interesting shoes (some kind of bold color or interesting pattern) and earrings. Honestly, my style has gotten quite boring. But I think that’s okay for right now because I guess my fashion is not really what I am focusing on right now.
I’ve started dressing so monochromatically for a couple of reasons. First, I feel like it’s much easier to look put-together in black and white than it is in pink and green. Obviously that assumption is based completely on societal influence, but I can’t seem to help continuing to dress this way. I want to get dressed, feel classy, and not have to worry about what my outfit looks like while I’m teaching. Black is slimming, or at least that’s what people say, and pants seem more authoritative, not to mention more comfortable, than skirts or dresses.
There’s another, way less stereotypically “girly,” element to my style. I was homeschooled until I was in sixth grade. My dad is a hippy of the 60s and 70s variety: long white beard, flowy Hawaiian shirts, only eats raw food, vegan, organic, garden, eating, only listens to community radio, volunteers at the local food co-op, protests so hard that he is part of a group of people who wears judge robes to all the Portland protests, to represent the judges on supreme court ruling to recognize corporations as people and to try and change the amendment. You get the idea. My mom is a Naturopathic Doctor who has somehow never been interested in clothes or jewelry or make-up or shaving and actually taught my dad about eating healthily.
As you can imagine, I wasn’t allowed to eat candy or junk food or meat, wear makeup, watch tv or have piercings. And I do all of these things now. But I also try to eat as many veggies and as much organic food as I can. Sometimes I go without shaving, I put my long skirt on, pull my Birkenstocks back out, stop wearing a bra for a while, and somehow feel more like myself. But this is a label fraught with stereotypes and materialism too, isn’t it? At least in some ways? Does wearing Birkenstocks or Chacos make me a hippy?
My current conclusion, though completely subject to change, is that to some extent, how you present yourself matters. It’s the first thing people know about you, even if it’s not necessarily relevant to who you even are.