Call me an angsty teenager (woah, wait I actually am one of
those), but lately I've been a bundle of high and low (mostly low)
emotions. This mood is completed by
sulking around the house, holing up in my room and knitting, and listening to
too much perpetuating music. Hey, we all
have our moods. And as much as I resent
my teenage angst for making me feel like crap and depressed and all around
questioning in the meaning of life, there is something to be said for feeling
these things. Some might venture to say
that it is this fundamental feeling of angst that allows us to mature and seek
reason in a world that seems hopeless.
Really, I have learned that sometimes accepting that I feel like crying
over the beauty of my own knitting and jamming out to the Indigo Girls on my
guitar is really good for me. I'm trying
really hard to cope with how I feel and that’s something that takes practice
and time. I have a fear though. What if I never grow out of it? What if I am
a perpetually unhappy person and this isn't just due to hormones and a recent lack of sleep? What if?
Anywho, since this blog does actually have a purpose and
theme (we are focusing on aesthetics here), and does not simply revolve around
me spilling my emotional guts all over the internet, I'm here to talk to you
today about the aesthetics of teen angst (in a roundabout way). Whilst many a fashionable lady will run
straight for her hoodies, flannel and comfy (see baggy) jeans on an off day;
I've been thinking that there has to be a better way of channeling all of these
non-desires to live as an actual breathing member of society into something a
little more positive. If you are
anywhere near as melodramatic as I am, you may very well have days when you
wake up and you swear you'd rather be buried and dead, than alternatively going
through the daily motions of life. Last
year, when I went to a public school, I often combated this feeling by putting
on the cutest outfit I could find in my closet.
And you'd never believe it, but sometimes it worked. Now, when I say 'cutest outfit', there were
many times when said cute outfits were really kind of crazy outfits. I took up high-waisted jeans during the
second half of my junior year, as a style staple just because they contain a
comfortable amount of shock value in a world where Abercrombie & Fitch, and
yoga pants abound.
The concept was that
I was saying "screw this" to what typical high school students latch
onto. I didn’t want to conform
anymore. I wanted to be an
Arabelle, a
Tavi. I wanted to be a part of a
revolution where teenage girls dress to kill in vintage floral skirts and DIY'd
denim jackets. So what if people thought I was weird for wearing my crazy pants. So what! I was making myself feel better in spite of my downward-spiral mood.
The truly miraculous thing is that I never received a
terrible amount of flack for dressing weirdly.
In fact, I don’t think I received any.
The people who I chose to associate myself with were completely supportive
of it all, and I even got compliments on the day I wore a striped t-shirt and
my high-waisted floral embroidered pants.
Even though I felt sort of
insecure because I was not complying to the norm, I was able to gain comfort
through my 'I don't care' attitude. In brief, I convinced myself to care about
not caring, and the result was productive teen angst.
The other day I found myself in a space of non-productive angst, and then I read
this article, and it reminded me about the parts of fashion that I love. I was a broken record, stuck in the thought pattern of
this is all so meaningless. I was beginning to think that maybe I don't even want to write a stupid blog anyways. After all, I had been slouching around the neighborhood in jeans, crew neck t-shirts and men's flannels. Hey, that's a style! Don't they call that one the ultimate I-don't-care-aesthetic? And you know what ended up getting me out of that funk? I reminded myself why it is that I wear high-waisted pants, and read fashion blogs, and hold all of my passion for weird things with a sort of reverence. It's because I want to be myself, and even though I have changed and grown and evolved in a million ways since last year when I decided I was done with being normal, I still want to hold on to certain parts of that girl. So as much as I want to do this:
I'm going to attempt to hold it together and be constructive about my crazy emotions and hormones, because there are a million rad ways to convey your loathing for the world.
