M’s post about feeling like she’s not able to dress the way she wants kind of reminded me to talk about this a little bit…
As far as fashion goes, what people around me (that is to say, random and not-so-random people I encounter on a daily basis) think about what I wear doesn’t bother me much. If they like it and say nice things, all the better, but if they don’t… well, so what? I can ignore them easily enough (hence, the music) and I dress the way I do because it makes me happy. And after enduring months of being stared at pretty much constantly in Japan… what’s the point in getting skittish now?
But, it’s not to say no one can affect how I dress.
People who’s opinion I actually really value can impact it greatly. Even small remarks, maybe not even necessarily meant so strongly, impact it.
And, having my carefully chosen style completely ignored by these people bothers me as well. It’s fine if you like me the way I am normally, but at least try to appreciate the effort I’ve taken to express what I feel like inside myself.
Girls understand this, I’m sure, but I don’t know if guys do, as much.
One side to wearing makeup is of course to appear more put-together (hiding the lack of sleep, for example?) but the other side is… well, boredom! To see that face in the mirror every day… don’t you just want to change it, sometimes? I don’t think you can really say to anyone else that it’s not boring to see them because it isn’t the same. This is a boredom born from an entire lifetime of staring in the mirror, from the time you recognized your reflection. To other people, you seem to have changed, but inside yourself, it’s too steady a flow to see it, and so it always seems the same. I suppose it would be weird to find a completely different person in the mirror sometime… but still, the boredom is there.
Clothing is the same way, and even if there’s not a set rubric for what each color, texture, and style is expressing, at the very simplest, it’s expressing what I think looks good at that moment, on that day. And that’s a part of me I’m sharing with you. Sometimes the intent is low, sometimes I’m just cold, or hot, so comments then mean even less because I’m not trying. But sometimes the intent is high, the effort is high, everything is chosen with love… to ignore that, is to ignore me. Maybe I’m not dressing for you, but my heart is in it, nonetheless.