The affection I feel towards my hair is similar to, and perhaps outmatches, the love a parent feels for their child. I dress it, pristinely, making sure it presents its best self to the world; I spoil it with its favorite food, L'Oreal Studio Line Curl Shaping Creme; and I commemorate its lengthy achievements (pun thoroughly intended) in the traditional parental methods of picture taking and relentless bragging. A growth chart engraved into my wall is forthcoming. My hair stylist mentioning my hair was long was like, well, my hair stylist mentioning my hair was long. I can't think of anything better.
She ran her fingers through my burgeoning tresses and gasped at the progress I had made in the 3 months since I was last subjected to her shears. I smiled, smugly. She gasped, disenchantingly. "We're going to have to do some more shaping. Some parts are much longer than others". I nervously swallowed in the exact cartoonish way an animated character swallows when they are faced with similarly earth-shattering news.
My hair follicle's had gained much ground in their ongoing war with my stubborn DNA and this "shaping", as she so ineffectually called it, would erase months of proud battle. It was all "for the greater good", I was told.
I hung my head in defeat as a signal for her to begin.
I hated the resulting haircut. Her so-called improvements left my hair feeling feeble in ways I had never imagined. It was limp and dry to the touch. If it is at all possible to suck the life force out of hair - an anatomical by-product that is, by nature, dead - than that's precisely what she did. Though it was supposed to be a routine trim, I still maintain something else happened while she was up there. But I'm not here to squabble about that. My point is, she said it was the best thing to do and I took her word for it. She is a hair stylist. Hair is only the summation of her profession so it was probably in my best interest to heed her advice. I don't mean to discredit her expertise, but at the time it just didn't feel right. I could have zealously waved my hands in refusal, gotten out of her chair, or simply said "no". But I didn't. I just took her word for it.
Back home, as I stroked my hair with the same inconsolable grief usually reserved for deceased loved ones, I realized that I, like many others, are all too guilty of taking the same unchallenging approach to life. There have been times, many times, when people have preached to me about the definite outcome or absolute necessity of a particular direction in life under the guise of "telling me what's right in this world". In my naïveté, I mistook their arrogance for wisdom, and suppressed any desire or inclination to ask why or find out for myself. I'm not taking any of that into 2013 with me. In the wide-eyed, tenacious, blindness to failure that is the spirit of New Year's Resolutions, I have declared that I will no longer take people's word and will, instead, experience things for myself because that's where the real life lessons are hidden - in the taking of wrong directions.
Now, this isn't to say I'm going to immediately run out and get myself a heroin-addiction. I'm just going to try to ultimately be less afraid to make mistakes. We all say mistakes don't scare us, and sure, we may not have night terrors that involve a giant blood-thirsty faux-pas chasing us, but does the absence of an anthropomorphized predator really mean that we're not afraid?
I sway to the edgier side of fashion when deciding what to wear. I don't necessarily try to take risks with my outfit choices, I just naturally gravitate towards the more questionable pieces and even then, I push the envelope further in order to stay on my toes. I presumed that since I take risks in this one aspect of my life, I can essentially be dubbed a risk-taker throughout all of my life. Not so. I'll don a pair of hot pants in inappropriate weather without hesitation, but when it comes to life choices I'm pretty conservative, not so much as to reduce my quality of life, obliterate my spontaneity, or vote Republican, but definitely enough to where I have noticed and found myself displeased.
My problem is, I want to do everything right. Nothing is more reflective of that than my academic career. School report cards became a quantitative way of measuring how in control I was. B+'s weren't celebrated in my household. A's didn't warrant so much as a pat on the back (if that), they were just expected. I've taken that insatiable thirst for straight A's with me into the real world. In math, there is only one right answer. You might get points for showing your work, but there is only one right answer. In my 24 years I have stumbled upon the notion that life is not a math test. In life there are many right answers and your "work" doesn't have to look the same as the guy sitting next to you.
We've all heard it, "The choices you make today can effect the person you become tomorrow". For some, it was a subtle reminder to avoid carelessness. For me, it became a cautionary tale of the impending lifelong misery sure to come from irrational actions. The words, sirens as they were, evolved into a requiem that lamented my possible persecution. Any action that wasn't plotted or planned immediately became a danger to the unwavering happiness I hoped to, one day, obtain. More than anything I'm afraid of my life not turning out how I imagined. There's a lot of stuff in my past - and unquestionably my present - that didn't go down as expected and the only consolation I have for this marathon of maladies is my quintessential future self. There is no margin of error. I very much need to become that person, so much so, I feel like I am biologically unable to "just see what happens". That right there is pre-2013 thinking. I've been so afraid of getting my outfit dirty (figuratively and literally) that I forgot that those little stains are what make life such an unparalleled experience, and thusly, fun.
Up until now, I've wanted a lot of things, in terms of experiences, to agree to the terms and conditions of my picture perfect fairy-tale life story - nice and neat, almost plastic wrapped. But, in a glorious stark contrast to years before, I want this year to be the messiest, disorganized, tangled, bruise of a year I've ever had. Metaphors aside, I'm going to be more bold. Instead of being safe and hiding behind what I was told, I'm going to take risks and relish in the happy accidents that come. I'll still get to where I'm going, but I will have so much more fun along the way.
In regards to this blog: Some have expressed concern that people may not want to take their style advice from the sick. If fashion is supposed to be aspirational, no one is clamoring for the latest in gastroenterology (see: Sheer Madness). Unfortunately for them, that's not what I'm doing. What you wear on a first date is of no concern to me. What I am doing is, recounting the sometimes horrendous but often illuminating circumstances of my time in recovery, wielding nothing more than a curated artillery of clothing, shoes, and accessories. Here, I examine my own style choices, all the while composing my love letter to fashion.
Carving out a piece of real estate in the blogosphere is about finding your niche - what you and and only you can provide to citizens of the World Wide Web. Blessing or curse, I have this unique experience. It's taken much from me but it has also changed the way I see fashion and, in turn, fashion has changed the way I see the world. That is also what this blog is about.
I want to write about fashion from a vantage point that's never been used. Most people don't know this because most people haven't gone through the physical and emotional degradation it takes to learn this, but fashion can heal better than most medicines - whether you want to be your best self or someone else entirely. It's amazing what the occasional yard of fabric and cleverly placed seam can do.
The recipe for the modern style and/or fashion blog is quite simple. Ingredients include: 1 obscure location for the background (e.g. a concrete area with lots of graffiti if you want to appear edgy and urban, a deserted field of some sort if you want to appear pensive) and 1 awkward pose (preferably with the subject looking in every direction except the camera's). Mix together (take photo) and repeat ad nauseam. The outfit doesn't even matter as long as you've got the pose and the location right. That's not the kind of blog I wanted this to be, lost in a pile of look-alikes. My goal is not to convince you I invented dressing.
In their own way all these things were the impetus for this blog which has, overtime, strayed from that original pioneering intent. It is my humble belief that one should not start a blog if one does not have anything to say. I have a few choice words, but I haven't expressed them as deeply or as frequently as I would have liked. The only way this blog is going to work, in my eyes, is if I'm honest about my experiences and how I'm using fashion to either enhance or combat them. So for 2013, I don't want to rest on intentionally vague adjectives like "fine" or "well" because most days I don't feel either of those things. I want to get even more real. I believe fashion has heart and the only way to show that heart is to open up. It may not create the prettiest angle, but Wear in Tear isn't about how fashion makes you look, its about how fashion makes you feel.
No comments:
Post a Comment