1. When you wear a home-made, puffed-sleeve, colonial-esque, lace-front dress, styled after your Felicity doll, to every Bible study your mom attends in the 3rd grade and wonder why the other kids aren’t taking your suggestion to form a Harriet-the-Spy spy club seriously.
2. When you realize the hand-me-down jeans you’ve been proudly wearing for all of 5th grade belonged to your male cousin, not your female cousin. No wonder the crotch area is so roomy.
3. When you rip the whole length of the butt seam in your rainbow-striped capris while failing to complete a backflip on a trampoline at a cousin’s birthday party in an old abandoned barn in the sticks.
4. When you look in a mirror and wonder whether your 6th grade best friend was lying when she told you violet Wet ‘n Wild glitter on your cheeks and the purple floral-print culottes your mom sewed you look super-cool together. Renate, after all, was only allowed to wear denim skirts that dragged on the ground.
5. When your mother forces you to wear her ankle-length plaid skirts from art school to class and insists your aunt, who is the vice president of design at Ann Taylor, would think you look chic. This is 7th grade and you are taking only band and computer science at the middle school on your military base in Germany. You don’t believe her.
6. When your friend confesses to you that several kids think your dad must be enlisted (read: poor) because your jeans are all highwaters. Also 7th grade. Rough year.
7. When you copy the Turkish kids at the outdoor German pool and give yourself a bathing suit wedgie so you can slide down the waterslide faster. You feel deep shame. And plastic burn.
8. When a notoriously scary counselor at your grandfather’s conservative Christian summer camp disciplines the other girls in your cabin for dressing inappropriately and tells them you are a good example to follow. Even then, you are acutely aware this is not a compliment.
9. When you get your period for only the second time ever at a different summer camp, during the trust exercise where you have to scale a 15-foot wall, so there’s no doubt the entire mixed-gender group saw your shame. You exclusively wear long t-shirts the rest of that week.
10. When you wear sparkly, Powerpuff Girls-emblazoned overalls to your 9th grade youth group hay ride and yell, “Hey, where’s my hot dude, [crush’s name]?” as soon as you get to the meet-up point, only to find your crush is right behind you. In that moment you know you are way too old for Powerpuff Girls clothing, but you are still too young to understand that this pain, too, shall pass.
11. When you wear a baggy neon orange t-shirt to match your youth group cohort on a missions trip to Tombstone, Ariz., and several airport officials mistake your group for a bunch of delinquents en route to juvie.
12. When, on the same missions trip, the group videographer catches you tugging your jean shorts out of your butt on film.
13. When you wear an olive green, long-sleeve shirt from Arizona Company to school in the 10th grade and this Methodist cheerleader keeps loudly announcing to everyone in your journalism class that you bought her used clothes from the on-base thrift store.
14. When you make the mistake of wearing a puka-shell necklace one of your first pseudo-camp-boyfriends bought you in Hawaii to camp the year after he gifted it to you, when you are decidedly not friends anymore. Your little brother tells you the boy informed him the necklace only cost $5 anyway.
15. When your male best friend looks at some prints from your “Paradise”-themed junior year prom and tells you your ivory silk column dress makes you look “weirdly lumpy.” You retort that maybe it was because you had to get there 6 hours early to blow up hundreds of metallic balloons and construct a dozen gold foil palm trees.
16. When you buy a pair of tight red, knockoff track pants with Hollister emblazoned across the butt at a Korean night market. Nothing bad comes of it, but still.
17. When your favorite pair of faded, old Sofee-style shorts disappear in the freshman dorm laundry room and six months later you find them taped to the wall on one of the males-only floors at your evangelical college. Even though people are watching, you take them back.
18. When the manager of the Baskin Robbins on the military base in Germany where you work between your freshman and sophomore year of college tells you he wishes his legs looked that good in shorts. And you wonder, “Is this sexual harassment?” Then you go back to taking evidence photos of the ice cream melting because Germans don’t really do air conditioning.
19. When your little brother gets irritated that you have permanently commandeered his long, khaki cargo shorts for the rest of the summer.
20. When you borrow a brilliant emerald green, polyester, spaghetti strap dress from the “ecotique” where you work as a shopgirl and look quite sophisticated at a sophomore year college banquet. Downside is you get tear stains all over the dress because that day your student ID was confiscated for stealing cucumbers from the cafeteria and the cafeteria manager threatens to revoke your student meal plan and it’s only October, so that means you might have to starve for two months.
21. When you notice a kid who is notorious for being a proto-hipster wearing a striped v-neck shirt you are 90% sure you donated to the undergrad co-op. Once again you question whether you know the difference between male and female clothing.
22. When your skirt flies up while you’re walking just off campus and a woman in a passing car screams, “Put some pants on, you whore” and you think, “I’ve come way too far to go back to wearing pants under my skirts, lady.”
23. When you ask your college roommate years later what her first impression of you was and she says she thought you needed a different bra because your nipples were poking through your thin t-shirt.
24. Anytime someone says, “Only you could pull that off.”
Tags: #notallhomeschoolers, childhood, clothing, fashion, modesty
I was home-schooled but attended a tiny Christian high school two days a week. So for me it was:
When you bought clothes from the boy’s side of Miller’s Outpost and wore them every Tuesday and Thursday for a year and never made any friends.
Sometimes I wonder if I had some kind of anti-social disability. Really.
I was not homeschooled, but I was raised by poor hippies, so I could do a similar article.
(And you did NOT look lumpy in that dress)
Same here, everything was handed down at least once. There was one striped Hang Ten shirt my uncle owned, then handed down to my brother who wore it in junior high, then my dad wore for doing chores for years. My mom eventually put it in the rag pile, only to have me steal it in college when grunge was in.
Aww, you’re too kind. Some 16-year-old girls (myself being one) are far too susceptible to what dirtbag teen boys say to them. Then we look back and think, “YOU, sir, were the lumpy one. You.”
I think the recurring theme to all of these isn’t so much to do with homeschooling as it is, “People are fking terrible.”
Awww, I totally would have joined your Harriet The Spy club!
Isn’t that pretty much what The Toast is?
I think I was just a generally frumpy/genderqueer lil’ kid, but I have a strong memory of wearing a polo shirt and an ankle length black skirt to a wedding when I was 10 because I couldn’t bear the thought of wearing a dress. I also had wire-frame glasses and incredibly bushy short hair. I looked like a tiny Red Lobster employee. (I have nothing but love for Red Lobster, for the record) My older sister and her friends called me “brother/sister”
Oh, I just want to hug your 10 year old self. And then smoke stolen cigarettes together while waiting for the reception to end.
Man, I wanted a Felicity the American Girl Doll-style dress SO BAD. We had the pattern and my mom even took me to buy fabric, but the dress never got made and I was resentful about it for many years. Slightly less so now, after reading this article. A Felicity dress would likely have been a blow my limited popularity couldn’t spare.
Why were those dresses around when we were young?? I definitely have a few school photos (circa kindergarten – second grade) of me in dresses with puff sleeves and patterned fabric and a big lace bib type thing and while I am forever grateful to the aunt who bought me nice dresses, why were THOSE the “in” thing???
I can only speak from my own experience, but in my middle- and upper-middle class New England town in the early-to-mid 90s, everything was all-American Girl, all the time. All my friends (whose families were all substantially richer than my family was) had multiple dolls and one friend had multiple dolls and literally each doll’s whole collection. So it was NOT A STRETCH that we were all wearing bizarre historical throw-back clothes. (I myself only had the stuff because my wonderful generous grandparents got it for me. I did have a Kirsten nightgown–white flannel with some simple blue trim.)
Then again, the mid-nineties were a poufy-blouse paradise generally. I definitely had a frilly-color off-white *body suit* from the Children’s Place that I thought was the absolute shit. Worn, of course, with hunter green leggings and granny boots.
Oh, I forgot about peasant blouses! I liked those. If midriff baring tops are coming back in style now, does that mean we get peasant blouses again in a couple years?
Those peasant blouses are back – my daughter reports from NY and London that they were everywhere
I never had a Felicity dress, but one year my mom made me a “prairie girl” dress that was basically just a pink flowered pioneer-style dress, and I LOVED THAT THING. I wore it for Halloween and any other occasion I could manage for years. It was just the cutest damn thing and probably didn’t do me any favours for popularity but that was nothing if I could put it on and pretend I was Kirsten’s sister.
YES! I was really into Little House on the Prairie one year and dressed up as her for Halloween or something. And I wore that dress to the ground along with these boots…
I also wanted a Felicity dress SO BADLY in fourth grade. And then in sixth grade when I was most definitely over it, my mom randomly made me one. Right in time for picture day! I wore it because I didn’t want her to feel bad.
And then the next year was the year of Clueless and heeled glitter jellies and tri-color foam platform shoes and hair mascara. Middle school was such a fashion quagmire. The school ended up re-writing the dress code because of my class.
HAIR MASCARA
I HAD FORGOTTEN
I’m almost certain I’ve seen hair mascara still lurking around the depths of the local dollar stores. And I can’t decide if it’s just 20 year old hair mascara or if some company somewhere is making NEW hair mascara. Which would be more horrifying?
Sephora sells it!
http://www.sephora.com/product/productDetail.jsp?…
They’re making new hair mascara.
Maybe they’ve found a way to make it…not basically paint that clumps all your hair together?
I’m not sure it’s worth having a streak of some random metallic color in my hair if it isn’t all clumped together afterwards.
I don’t know. I mean, as long as it drips all over your light-colored shirt when you inevitably get caught in the rain it’s still worth it.
I was not homeschooled, but my mom did make gobs of those AG dresses, from the patterns, for my little sister and me to wear. They did not improve my popularity, but a small subset of fellow AG lovers and/or nerd classmates thought they were cool.
My mom is such a baller sewer I don’t think she even used a pattern for the dress. I could do a whole different article just on the amazing Halloween costumes she sewed me – Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie and Joan of Arc were two of my favorites.
Ahhh! I got down to more recent pictures and was like, WAIT! She went to MY conservative Christian college! Sorry the SAGA people caught you. I was not home-schooled, but this still hit very close to home.
WUT?!? Did we know each other? I remember an Amelia but I don’t want to be like “Is your last name XX?” So maybe this is another way to parse it out: were you kinda/sorta associated with the theater/English crowd and you had a sister who also went to the same college? Anyways, LOVE running into fellow Wheaties, in-person/on-the-internet/wherever.
It’s meeeeeeeeeee! Hi, how are you, etc! Loved the post, and then loved it even more when I realized who it was. Yay, Wheaton!
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! BRB looking you up on FB.
Whoa! Did you go to Wheaton college (known in the townie dirtbag circle as having the best cloud/infinity mirror version of heaven to hang out in while high)? I’m certain that we exasperated all of the very nice and tolerant Christian docents. My 14 year old dirtbag self would like to say thank you:)
You got me! But what is the cloud/infinity mirror version of heaven?? Something in the Billy Graham Center (otherwise known as the BGC)?
“If you are a woman and you bought this book for practical tips on how to make it in a male dominated workplace, here they are: no pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly (some people say “never let them see you cry.” I say if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.) […] perhaps you’re a parent and you bought this book to learn how to raise an achievement-oriented, drug free, adult virgin. You’ll find that too. the essential ingredients, I can tell you up front, are a strong father figure, bad skin, and a child-sized colonial lady outfit.” – Tina Fey, Bossypants
COLONIAL LADY OUTFITS FOR LYFE
Overalls forever! I had this pair of off-white corduroy ones that I wore EVERYWHERE. And always with a striped turtleneck. It’s probably a good thing I was homeschooled. Middle school would not have been kind.
Middle school is never kind. It is the nature of the beast. (I could revisit what my wardrobe was like in middle school, circa 1987-89, but some scars are better left alone. It’s small comfort that my seventh-grade English teacher, wherever she is now, probably feels a surge of pain when she remembers that she both wrote and shared a passionate haiku about Brian Boitano.)
It wasn’t any nicer around 1980. Just more Farrah hair.
I know no one wants to look “adorable” in 9th grade, but for real: You looked adorable in those overalls!
Aw, thanks. I’m starting to notice them coming back and whenever I pass a pair I think, “Dare I? Would it look good?” then “I’d just walk around feeling like I’m 12, so no, better not.”
I grew all the inches when I was 11 and had to wear my socks pulled up under my jeans instead of folded over like usual so my ankles wouldn’t show in between. FEEL YOUR PAIN.
Otherwise I survived mostly intact on the homeschool-fashion front, being non-evangelical with a bit of a clothes obsession. It was close sometimes, though.
I was not homeschooled, but my dad was enlisted. Luckily I had girl-cousins old enough to give me hand-me-downs, so although my clothes were 5 years out of date & 2 sizes too big, at least they were definitely For Girls.
Until 9th grade, when I decided the height of coolness would be to wear my dad’s old polo shirts and polyester v-neck sweaters. The madness lasted until my dad retired from the Army and got a private-sector job so we could finally afford to shop at Target.
Number 9 happened to me – bible camp, fifth grade, wearing yellow shorts while swimming in a river – and it still haunts me.
Number 9 happened to 12 of the 15 girls in the cabin of which I was a summer camp counselor. TWELVE OF THE FIFTEEN GIRLS GOT THEIR PERIOD FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT WEEK. Twelve. There was no shame, only lots of blood, diaper-sized pads, frank conversations, and either tearful or jubilant letters home, depending on the girl.
Ahhh yay other homeschooler ladies! I am still trying to understand how this ‘dressing like a human’ thing works. I mean, considering my adolescence was spent in some combination of prairie skirts and tie-dye tops and combat boots or ballet flats it is probably for the best my 20s were spent in jobs wherein scrubs of set color descriptions were the requirement (save for a period at about 20-years-old where I was taking off my clothes for money – I can understand nothing as a dress code, but make-up was baffling) and I didn’t have to puzzle out professional clothing for awhile.
I remember when I was 14 or 15 years old getting a top in a pile of passed along clothing from a friend’s family. Turned out it had gone through two other families with girls my age that their mothers wouldn’t let them wear because of it being immodest – maybe it was a v-neck? My mother laughed about this.
I still routinely bust into a room and say “Hey, where’s my hot dude, [crush’s name]?”. Or if I’m feeling a little more NOLA than usual, “Hey, where my hot dude [crush’s name] at?” I regret nothing.
Ah, this hit home for me. I wasn’t home-schooled, but I went to Catholic school, and my parents were of the mind that we didn’t need to buy regular clothes for “back-to-school” shopping, just new uniforms. I also wore a lot of hand-me-downs from my aunt who was eight years older than me.
I was an unpopular kid anyway, but especially so on out of uniform days.
Oh god, same. I have so many shameful memories of out-of-uniform days. I had some non-uniform shirts but all of my pants were regulation pleat-front khakis. There was a girls’ skirt option at my school but I never had them because it would be wasteful to buy clothes that couldn’t be passed down to my brother.
I was not homeschooled, but I WAS/am a fat girl, and basically from ages 10-13 I almost exclusively wore clothing that was handed down from a 40 year old woman because I didn’t think I deserved to wear new clothes.
*all the hugs*
Thanks. Don’t worry, I am SO over that phase now.
YUP. Also the only new clothes that fit were targeted for women in their 60s.
BUTTERFLIES FUCKING EVERYWHERE. There is a very important reason my sister’s twitter handle is @hatebutterflies.
Fat girl high-five! I was 5’8″ by fifth grade and plenty pudgy; my clothes were adult clothing. I looked like a bank teller, very business-casual.
I also had enormous feet, which meant many years of trying to find shoes in women’s sizes that looked suitable for an eight- or nine- or ten-year-old and fit my parents’ tiny budget. It was not easy. I still remember the summer that we found (gasp!) two pairs of suitable sandals that fit and were affordable. I asked my mother to choose; I simply could not.
And then my mother — I have never forgotten this and probably never will — my mother said an unprecedented thing.
She turned to the sales clerk and said “We’ll take both pairs.”
Then we had a long conversation in which she explained to me (and maybe to herself) why we were indulging so extravagantly, and in which I (fearful of the guilt of another growth spurt that would make my new shoes obsolete before they wore out) half-tried to dissuade her, but she would not be budged.
I don’t remember another single pair of shoes from my childhood, but I remember both those pairs well enough to draw them from memory, every strap and buckle and leather eyelet.
That story made me smile. Your mom rocks.
There’s a lot tied up in that story about supposedly-middle-class expectations, silent poverty, performance of gender and social class, and mother-daughter stuff. As an adult, my toes are permanently dovetailed, smoothly fitted to each other in a tidy sculptural shape, because I spent my childhood not speaking up about too-small shoes. I didn’t reckon this out consciously, but somewhere inside I knew that speaking up would mean seeing my parents silently stress about budgeting for new shoes (or new glasses or a new coat or new notebooks).
So, yes, I will always remember the day Mom bought both pairs. Maybe the budget had some give that month. Maybe she hoped two pairs would wear out more slowly than one and she was mentally amortizing the cost. Maybe she knew that sandals, with the open toe and heel, will hold a too-large foot better than boots, so they’re worth the splurge. Maybe there was a sale I didn’t notice.
Or maybe she just knew what a powerful luxury she was affording me for an extra fifteen bucks or so, and maybe she knew how that feeling — of luxury, of choice, of excitement, of zest — would linger for the entire summer. She couldn’t possibly have guessed I would remember it 30+ years later with enough immediacy to bring me to the edge of tears… or could she?
I have a very strong sense memory of buckling the delicate ivory strap of the dressier pair before a fancy dinner with my grandparents, and knowing how lucky I was to have two pairs to choose from.
It will surprise no one to hear that I love shoes, that I feel mingled guilt and pleasure every time I buy a pair of shoes, no matter how necessary, that I have chronic foot pain (in part, no doubt, from the modest deformation of my toes from years squeezing them into too-small shoes), and that I get a pure thrill of happiness every time I put on exactly the right pair of shoes.
Um, I think you should pitch something about THIS. I’ll trade you for the cucumber pitch 😉
Yes! I had huge feet too! (Still do. God bless the internet because if it didn’t exist I probably wouldn’t have awesome fat girl clothes OR shoes that fit.) We had to go all the way to the city to get shoes that fit by the time I was 14.
Yeah, the shoes were the big deal. If she absolutely needed to, Mom could (and did) make age-appropriate clothing*, but she couldn’t exactly cobble up a pair of flats for me.
*And you can just imagine how kind and admiring my peers were of the big fat tall girl in thick glasses with home-cut hair, homemade clothing, and a never-corrected overbite. Whatever, I’m awesome and beloved.
This is how my mother dressed me, because she had NO idea what to do with her daughter’s not-skinny hips and boobs.
Fucking empire waist dresses.
*fistbump* for getting past that shit, lady.
Oh, wow. Your poor 10-13 year old self!
I homeschooled myself from grade 8 to grade 10 (ie refused to go to school), and also during that period I wore a pair of bright orange polyester pin-striped bellbottoms that happened to be jauntily cuffed. At least I didn’t wear them to school.
Briefly homeschooled… wore a lot of non-cotton pants and definitely pucca-bead necklaces.
I was mostly saved from this by virtue of hanging out with the skateboard boys at church… and convincing my mom to buy me Element shirts and other skateboard gear. This was a failed attempt to be butch.
You look like every gal I was never allowed to hug at Youth Group.
But were you allowed to SIDE-hug them? We were, in my liberal youth group. At least until some kids got caught making out in one of the church rooms and I think all hugging was banned after that. My memory’s foggy though…
No PDA of any kind! Slippery slope!
I had a faded black t-shirt with a gold foil tiger on it. Damn, I miss that shirt.
Also, a tan and navy striped pullover hoodie thing that I wore almost every day throughout 5th and into 6th grade. In 6th grade, enter mean-girl who pointed out that I wore the same thing every day (never mind the fact that I changed the shirt under it every day). I don’t think I ever wore it again. To this day I am hyper-vigilant about not wearing the same clothes too often.
I wore the same Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt every single day of 7th grade. I was lucky because anyone who wasn’t my friend didn’t notice me long enough to give a crap and I was such a mean little cuss that none of my friends ever said anything.
BUT WHY WERE YOU STEALING CUCUMBERS?!
Haha that’s a whole ‘nother story… suffice to say, I did NOT get kicked out of school but it was traumatic.
This answer is insufficient to slake my curiosity. I hope you’re pitching a story of the day you got caught stealing cucumbers.
I’m desperate for “stealing cucumbers” to be some sort of clever misandrist slang.
I propose: “When one does something that is wrong under social standards but so absolutely ridiculous to get into trouble for that you can’t believe how guilty you feel.” Like saying “I hate all men” or negotiating your salary or going out in sweat pants.
I was not homeschooled, but I was extremely sheltered. I remember particularly my “best friends” (who earned those scare quotes, believe me) pulling me aside for an intervention in 6th grade and informing me solemnly that spandex and stirrup pants were not cool anymore. And there went half my wardrobe.
I wasn’t homeschooled but there’s a lot of overlap between homeschool fashion and Mormon girl fashion, man.
I was homeschooled, along with my siblings. My parents were not big into the whole “buying new clothes and new bikes for growing kids” thing, because we’d either outgrow or destroy everything within a year. Result: I dressed like a surfer/hobo well into college, despite having no surfboard and plenty of food/housing.
True story-the social politics of German military base schools (FIS, what up!) are as complicated and treacherous as anything the Cold War ever produced.
Whoops! Replied to the wrong comment. I agree though, the social structure within military schools is a very unique thing. On the flip side, I graduated from a DoD high school and I felt like, once kids reached their mid-to-late teens, they were a lot less hung up on rank and friendships were more likely to cross enlisted/officer, civilian/military/foreign national lines.
I was homeschooled until grade 5 – I don’t think my phase of wearing a plastic tiara EVERYWHERE would have worked if I were in kindergarten. My Olan Mills pictures (seriously, every child who lived in Northern Virginia in the early 90s..not sure about other parts of the US… has Olan Mills pictures) don’t capture that phase, though.
OLAN MIIIIILLS.
I have a folder of pictures of myself saved to my iPhone (snaps from my self-made scrapbooks for each of my years from grades 6-12, when I was homeschooled) which I’ve named “Party Trick.” I pull it out at parties when things are getting dull. They largely involve me clad in size L T-shirts from Wal-Mart and calico jumpers I sewed for myself. In one, I wear pseudo-leather tennis shoes (also WalMart) and a lace petticoat/underskirt thing that I thought was the coolest. I was 16. This album rendered several of my male colleagues (at a Christian college) speechless one night over beers.
Those years were tough times.
AH, you sound just like me *wipes tears of joy / sorrow from eyes*
There will never be anyone quite like us, will there? Off the topic of clothes, I rendered my writing group speechless the other day when I told them of my first taste of full strength orange juice at age 14. I remember it far more clearly than my first taste of alcohol. You should have seen their faces.
I totally did the petticoat thing! …Under an empire waist dress. With “skater” shoes.
*ohgod*
I have a folder of pictures of myself saved to my iPhone (snaps from my self-made scrapbooks for each of my years from grades 6-12, when I was homeschooled) which I’ve named “Party Trick.” I pull it out at parties when things are getting dull. They largely involve me clad in size L T-shirts from Wal-Mart and calico jumpers I sewed for myself. In one, I wear pseudo-leather tennis shoes (also WalMart) and a lace petticoat/underskirt thing that I thought was the coolest. I was 16. This album rendered several of my male colleagues (at a Christian college) speechless one night over beers.
Pardon the double-post!
I almost screamed with joy when I saw this article. It’s all too familiar. I’m a homeschooled teenaged girl, and last week I went with some of my homeschooled teenage girl friends on a field trip to three different consignment stores. We were accompanied by our mothers, who stood back, watched us try on clothing, and said things like, “You can only get that if you put straps on it.”
It was a really exciting field trip for us.
But have you ever had the “What! A leather skirt! Your mother would not approve of this purchase!” “I’m making it into a satchel bag.” “Oh, carry on then.” conversation? Because those are the best!
Seventh Grade: I’m attending a public junior high for the first time ever. We have also moved from near-tropical climate to the frozen land of Northern California. I have just discovered that my “unique” first name is shared by half the girls in my class. One of those girls asks me where I got my amazing jacket, because she wants one just like it. I tell her–proud of both the thrift and the opportunity, the way this makes it one-of-a-kind–that we got it at a thrift shop.
Approximately ten seconds later I realize she’s mocking me. I spend the rest of the semester reading intently during all lunch breaks. I pretend to be spacey and distracted and don’t react when people call my name, because either it’s not me or they’re just going to make fun of me again.
Fifteen years later, I tell this story to my therapist, and she asks me if maybe that girl was asking an honest question, and was complimenting my jacket sincerely. I realize this is the beginning of the end of that professional relationship.
If it’s seventh grade, it’s mockery. Sad but true.
Shout out to everyone else whose mom sewed bootleg Girl Scout uniforms that were almost the right color!
In blessed, merciful England, all schoolchildren are given (admittedly hideous) uniforms throughout our school career. My school’s concoction was particularly delightful – a bottle green, knee-length skirt (they used to make us kneel on the edge of the school stage during assembly to check that our skirts hit the floor – upon leaving the stage the sluttier girls amongst us would immediately roll over the waistband half a dozen times in order to expose acres of pubescent thigh; the overall effect was somewhat marred by the lumpy tire belly of rolled-up skirt, but dammit, we worked with what we were given), mustard yellow shirt, house tie for winter (bottle green, natch, but with added fetching stripes in house colours), bottle green v-necked jumper, and – la pièce de résistance – a heavy, woollen, bottle-green blazer with gold braid trim that had the remarkable quality of developing a distinctly fishy odour whenever it rained. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but England is a country in which rain is simply a slightly altered state of air. It was not a fragrant school.
When I was 12 years old, my family moved for one year to the fabled land of Friends and Britney Spears, the New World – to Waunakee, Wisconsin. Thrilled as I was by the opportunity to finally get close to the beating heart of popular culture, there was one problem I had not anticipated – Middle School, and, for the first time in my life, autonomy over my clothing. And oh, dear comment section, were there ever some sartorial teething problems. My mother was very much of the “Why be boring??” school of fashion theory, and in the summer before my first day of school encouraged me into a new wardrobe of: one pair of velvet-patched flared jeans, one tie-dyed, bell-sleeved shirt, one t-shirt on which ‘GIRLZ ROCK’ was picked out in rhinestones, one pair of white trainers, and, quite possibly, a cardigan. This embarrassment of riches would, surely, bedazzle my new American classmates!
It may not surprise you to learn that it took me about three months to make any friends. (I bonded with a similarly tie-dyed South African girl over our shared understanding that the proper word for ‘trunk’ is ‘boot’, for a trunk is an appendage of an elephant and to say otherwise is unsophisticated foolishness.)
I returned home the following year, touched with an air of American glamour, and full of a new-found secret gratitude for my fishy, fusty, mustard-and-green uniform – and even for the ubiquitous rain.
Haha, oh yes. I went to boarding school with a very strict uniform policy, then spent a year in Germany on youth exchange where there was not only a free-dress code, but *gasp!* BOYS. Fashion was only part of the culture shock.
Oh, wow. Your poor 10-13 year old self!
My mum sewed a lot of my clothes. I think it’s only recently that I realise how out of touch she really was with current fashions. Hmm.
I remember going to the fabric shop to get some material to make me some new clothes when I was about 16. One of the shop assistants was a younger guy and we used to spend the whole time insulting one another (good naturedly, obviously). I chose a lovely blue and yellow wool check for the jacket my mum was going to make. He told me that someone had just come in to buy a length of it–to make a horse blanket.
I STILL HAVE THE JACKET. And it’s still awesome, damnit.
My mum sewed a lot of my clothes. I think it's only recently that I realise how out of touch she really was with current fashions. Hmm.
I remember going to the fabric shop to get some material to make me some new clothes when I was about 16. One of the shop assistants was a younger guy and we used to spend the whole time insulting one another (good naturedly, obviously). I chose a lovely blue and yellow wool check for the jacket my mum was going to make. He told me that someone had just come in to buy a length of it–to make a horse blanket.
I STILL HAVE THE JACKET. And it's still awesome, damnit.
Haha, oh yes. I went to boarding school with a very strict uniform policy, then spent a year in Germany on youth exchange where there was not only a free-dress code, but *gasp!* BOYS. Fashion was only part of the culture shock.
Wait…. you were allowed to wear SHORTS? And you had a PROM? Wow, you were lucky.
This is me, 8th grade portrait: https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak…
This is me, at 18: https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/…
My mom forced me to wear clothing off the clearance rack of Old Navy & the Bugle Boy (remember that?) outlet so that my tops would be adequately “long and loose” enough for her sex-paranoid Muslim Indian views — and that was the *compromise*. It was either that or wear obviously “foreign”-looking clothing instead of jeans and cargo pants.
My tenth-grade boyfriend went on a school trip to Hawaii and brought me back three puka-shell necklaces. Two years later, I went on the same trip and discovered that two of the necklaces were ones you get FOR FREE when you go to a certain chain of tourist souvenir shops. We were good friends at that point, but I was legitimately pissed for a day.
My tenth-grade boyfriend went on a school trip to Hawaii and brought me back three puka-shell necklaces. Two years later, I went on the same trip and discovered that two of the necklaces were ones you get FOR FREE when you go to a certain chain of tourist souvenir shops. We were good friends at that point, but I was legitimately pissed for a day.
Situation 11 is so, so golden. Orangey-golden, I suppose.
PS You looked boss in all of these photos.
Situation 11 is so, so golden. Orangey-golden, I suppose.
PS You looked boss in all of these photos.
I only wear peasant type skirts now. Entirely of my own volition; mom bought us sweat pants and cargo pants and stuff. Didn't help that I developed (ahem) early and was hideously embarrassed. Every once in a while I get asked if I'm super conservative or if my homeschooling background required me to wear these ankle-length skirts and headscarves.. nope, that's just me, filthy hippy.
I think I'd resent skirts a lot more if I'd been forced to wear them, but no… as soon as I was allowed to buy my own clothes I was buying jumpers and peasant clothes.
And um, I'm not even slightly conservative.
Perhaps in part it was because prior to that I WAS being dressed like my mom! Flowery teeshirts, sweat pants that were closer to pajama pants, old lady shoes… never saw her in a skirt! Who knows. Woosh. I pity you for those glasses, ahh, they look good on some faces but not most! And it always sucks to look like mini-mom when you want to look cool and distinct! Once someone thought I was HER mom! D:
Me too! In my case, my mother was a controlling hippie. I also had to buy clothes for myself in her size as well as in her style, because if I bought them in my own size, I "made" her feel unattractive, which was "mean." The end result is that I'm still obsessed with finding perfect-for-me clothes and going clothes shopping, and I'm 36. Also, the first fashionable, tiny-framed designer glasses I bought as an adult were SO SATISFYING, OMG.
There is a picture of me in green jelly sandals, winnie-the-pooh socks and a muppet Animal t-shirt that came down to my knees. I was 13 and about to start school for the first time.
My freshman year of high school I went to school in a Hershey Kiss costume for halloween. People were so embarrassed for me they didn’t even make fun of me.
The next year I wore a traditional Bavarian dress one day. No one acknowledged my existence all day long.
I did eventually get good at completely-natural looking make up, since if my mother could tell I was wearing any I had to go wash it off.
Finally I ended up with a four-year degree in costume design and can now dress myself!
One time I went to a sex party and was going to wear overalls. Like, an actual make-Eyes-Wide-Shut-look-tame sex party, and I thought overalls were the appropriate attire! Someone else convinced me that just not wearing pants was a better idea and thank goodness for them.
My mom also did the thing where she tried to convince me that many things were cool and stylish. Mom, I love you, but no.
I went from Catholic school to public school in elementary school. I remember wearing only sweatpants (after first) and jeans (eventually) with sweatshirts, and a lime green cap sleeved tshirt (because it was the 90s), and my mom having her version of a heart-to-heart with me about 'body image issues.' Nope, I just thought it was A Look. :-/