The O-town Scene

Laygirl Fashion |by Emily Popek If my 14-year-old self could see me now … When I was younger, it seemed I was always yearning after fashions I couldn't acquire. This was partially a function of growing up in a rural area in the pre-Internet era, when my ability to buy the things I saw in magazines ranged from limited to impossible. As part of this constant yearning, I used to draw these sort of aspira- tional pictures of myself, imagining High school punk persona sure I'm not the only one who ap- proached getting dressed this way – whether consciously or uncon- sciously, adolescents put a lot of time and energy into crafting their visual identities. But somewhere along the line, Adult not concerned with personas that changed. Somewhere between college and now (a chasm of time that seems to have grown alarmingly when I wasn't looking), I stopped buying clothes based on whether or not they seemed "cool," and started focusing on things that I thought looked good, or pretty, or flattering. (Or comfortable.) Such it is that how cool I might be two years into the future, or when I was in high school or college. I would label everything in the photos to point out what was significant about the gar- ments, accessories or hairstyles I had chosen – things I always thought were much cooler than whatever I had ac- cess to at the time. As a junior high kid, and even into high school, my taste was almost entirely guided by cultural signi- fiers. I had to make sure my clothes were sending the right message about me to the people around me. I'm my day-to-day wardrobe is one that my 14-year-old self would never have sketched out in an aspirational drawing. I would not have coveted the brown tweed skirt and al- ligator heels that I now adore; nor the boring-but-practical button-down shirts and corduroy blazers I rely on. I'm pretty sure the clothes I wear now don't tell people much about my taste in music, my political views or any of the other cultural signifiers that used to be so important to me. But that's one of the nice things about not being an adolescent anymore. Those things don't have to define me – or my relationships with people. Emily F. Popek still occasionally tries to look cool by wearing Converse, but she is pretty sure she's not fooling anyone. She is also assistant editor of The Daily Star. Nov. 10, 2011 O-Town Scene 5

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