always evolving

By Anonymous

I remember being preoccupied with how I was presenting myself and the way I would be perceived as early as elementary school. In a world with so many options and so many limitations, there is always room left for the desire for a change from what you already have. I don’t know if there was a time when I wasn’t aware that there are limitations on what one can use to present themselves to the world. From what style and size of clothing is actually available, to the money I had (or didn’t have) to own the clothing, to how much time I have to shop and think about my own appearance, to the day-to-day challenges of getting up and getting dressed, to social expectations of clothing and appearance across time and space, there are countless obstacles standing between my body now and the image in my mind of how I want my body to look when I step out of my front door. Most of the time, I can always see room for improvement — there are almost always discrepancies between the way I actually appear and the way I want to be perceived.

Given whatever resources I have on each day, my goal is always to feel confident. I want to get dressed up in a way that gives me the kind of confidence that changes my posture for the day, makes my breaths deeper, and my mind more clear. The actual items of clothing that can help me achieve that look completely different from day to day, depending on my mood and the environment I’m going to be in. I always love to curate my appearance to match the occasion in colors/vibes, but bend the rules of casual/formal wear and “professionalism” in dress. Recently, I’ve been customizing a lot of my own clothes, which has reduced a lot of the limitations of fashion and expression that exist because I can make the clothes look however I want. I like to draw inspiration from today’s fashion trends, those of the past, and also from music I listen to, artists and designers I follow, and anything else I see that makes me go, “Oh, that’s cool.” A lot of the time, that means that my “style” changes dramatically from day to day, and I don’t really have a signature vibe, which I prefer. I love changing my hair and my whole look often enough that I never look the same over time or on any given day. I enjoy the freedom to dramatically change my style and not being glued to a certain look. I don’t think I achieve my goal of that easy confidence every time I get dressed in the morning because of all the limitations of being on earth (like doing laundry), and because I’m not always sure what I even want to look like. My hope for the future is that I can keep trying something new every day and finding ways of dressing myself up that make me feel most secure. I also am learning more about how to make clothes and I hope that helps bring me closer to how I think I want to look. Lots of days, I feel very confident in what I’m wearing and how I look. I learn more about myself and the world every day, so I can refine and change how I go about presenting myself all the time, and my security and confidence in that is always growing.