the throes of puberty

One of the most common questions I get on Formspring (aside from “do you eat/do you eat meat/how much money do you make/where do you find bras for small tits/where do you cut your hair/why and how are you queer/kill yrself plz”) usually involves something about how did you used to dress or how has your style changed or what did you used to look like zomgz. In conjunction with The Rejectionist’s call for embarrassing diaries of yore, I now present you with something ever so slightly tangentially related but perhaps shifted towards this blog’s content and my insatiable vanity: THIRTEEN OR SO YEARS OF MOSTLY TERRIBLE FASHION, also known as GPOYW taken to the extreme, also know as Too Many Photos of Me But It’s Kind of Hilarious and I Am Nostalgic So Maybe It’s Okay?

I was REALLY EXCITED about going to the first day of kindergarten clad in Minnie Mouse puff paint vomit with a vinyl messenger bag, a side braid held in place with a neon green scrunchie, and a shit-eating grin, if you can call that a grin. (Michael, however, at far left, seems to have perfected my current blog picture-face two decades before I did.)

But for serious: let us really begin sometime in the late 90’s when I was an unwashed acne-stricken socially inept pseudo-braniac pariah attending George Washington Junior High School generally regarded as a leper by her peers. We will begin in the eighth grade, at which point I first chopped off at least three feet of my formerly-for-my-whole-life-waist-length-blonde-hair and, hormone-ridden and despondent, demanded that my mother purchase me JNCOs, arguably establishing (or attempting to) a sense of “personal style” for the first time. Oh, joy!

Here we have Exhibit A, in which my overgrown self is poolside, sporting a bikini top and jncos, braces and soccer-mom hair. This bikini top proceeded to fall off my flat torso about three days later this girl’s 13th birthday pool party and I got called a dyke because I had just cut all my hair off and gone so far as to show off my nipz to the girls of George Washington Junior High School by means of Tragic Bikini Accident, and once I got over that, none of the boys would kiss me when we played spin the bottle later that night even though (or perhaps because) I had just showed them my tits by accident and I cried in the bathroom. BEAT THAT FOR TWEEN HUMILIATION, THANK YOU.

We also may note my proclivity for wearing my hair in two stupid little pigtails. The only thing I can explain here at all is that the wings were for halloween, but not much else was. Not even the soda tab on a ball chain necklace. Alas.

Exhibit B: Up next we have a variety of stylin’ looks from early to mid high school. This period seems to have been largely marked by disfiguring acne, inverse bob/spiked-back hair and an apparent attempt to take stock in Pacific Sunwear. Retrospective analysis reveals that I was not as repulsive and deformed and destined to die a virgin as I thought I was at the time, and the fact that I looked vaguely like a homosexual. OOOH, FORESHADOWING.

Exhibit C: Here we present you, oh dear readers and friends, with the late to mid high school years, at which point I got a digital camera, was an avid/compulsive Livejournal user and hot_fashion poster, had slightly better but not much better hair, still looked sorta gay, finished puberty, and listened to a lot of alternatingly whiney and angry music.

JUNIOR PROM. Evidence that I am a giantess. Please note also that I was wearing converse because at this phase of my life I protested girl shoes.

At left, I am wearing colours and interacting with a dead pig. At right, I am in Disneyworld for a MARCHING BAND TRIP (I played trumpet, kids) wearing a skirt for which there is no real explanation other than that I made it out of a pair of old jeans and thought that was really crafty or something. GREAT.

Exhibit D: Early college, where for three months I dressed like a twelve year old, wore pink, posted compulsively to hot_fashion, and then almost overnight discovered that I was marginally attractive and apparently dedicated large amounts of time to attempting to cultivate my newfound non-repulsiveness or something.

Exhibit E: 2005 to 2008. At some point I moved to Prague and, like, had an identity crisis or maybe resolved 19 to 20 years of one or something, started doing stupid things to my hair, and apparently stopped wearing colours once and for all. I think this was a result of having to pack exactly one suitcase of clothes and my method of dealing involved “bring only black and white” and “black eyeliner.” Eventually I graduated college and chopped my hair off again and moved permanently to New York AND Y’ALL KNOW THE REST FROM THERE.