I'm So Me In This

BY Jackie Wykes

I recently bought myself a sequined boob tube. Hardly earth-shattering, but definitely out of character for me. I’m just not the kind of girl who wears sequined boob tubes. At least, I didn’t think I was.

It’s often said (if not quite believed) that “the clothes maketh the (wo)man”. People have written books about clothing behaviour and the construction of the self. (They’re good books, you should look them up.) They argue that to regard clothing as merely decorative is to underestimate its social significance. Fashion communicates who we think we are and where we want to belong. We can both identify ourselves with a certain group by wearing a certain style, and express ourselves individually through the particular way we combine our favourite elements of that style.

Take, for example, a cluster of emo-punk girls I walked past, waiting for coffee at Gloria Jean’s. (I am not, by the way, the kind of girl who buys her coffee at Gloria Jean’s). I wonder if the girls, with their salon-dyed black hair and their kilt pins positioned just so, know anything about the origins of the style they’ve adopted, and the way it’s been bought out, aestheticised and sold back as a pre-packaged identity. What does it say about who they perceive themselves to be?

When I’m in the change room trying outfits, I’m thinking not only how I want to look but also how I want to be seen. I’m not girly, so sparkles, sequins, butterflies, beige, pink, pastel and frilly are out. I’m not shirts with collars; they make my shoulders look too wide, too butch. I’m not high heels or diamante thongs, and I’m definitely not any sort of metallic-coloured cowboy boot. I envy girls who can wear op-shop floral and look cool; I just look like someone’s frumpy aunt. I have decided, after much soul-searching and deep sense of disappointment in myself, that I am not a decorative but pointless belt. Sometimes I’m a red polka-dot frock, but only on special, dress-up occasions. I don’t want to be the person who tried too hard.

My sister doesn’t have this problem. When I ask her how her sartorial choices influence her sense of who she is in the world, she looks at me blankly and says, “I just like it.”

It makes me wonder if I could be like that. If my choices in the change room could not be the careful selection (or more often, rejection) of a particular image, but a reflection of the things I like, am drawn to, find beautiful or pleasing or pleasurable. After all, if my choices are all about style rather than taste, then I might as well get my coffee at Gloria Jean’s.

And so I have a strapless slip of sequined fabric sitting in my wardrobe. And you know what? I like it.