I tried to read the archive link, but it only let me get about halfway before locking me out. It seemed fascinating, though.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 4:01 PM on September 27

Is this link better, HypotheticalWoman?
posted by Kattullus at 4:31 PM on September 27

¡° I have no regrets about my eagerness to flee childhood in order to get to the future. If I had loved myself as I was, I might not be who I am. This is the cunning of reason. We long to change and eventually do. Who is to say that the longing wasn¡¯t the most purposeful agent of that change? ¡±

Thank you for sharing this. I tried to give my kids a rural childhood, and have watched as my younger has taken up eyeliner, hand-decorated Converses, and shows featuring mosh pits, self-launching into some different version of life, transmuting discontent into adventure. The longing is the catalyst. I can only stand by and worry, and secretly I am a little in awe of the wish for self-determination through action and dress, having myself once traded classroom clothing for farm duds and becoming what I wanted as a child. My suburban mother wailed at that one, as I do now, although I see more clearly the burning wish for the power to be otherwise, the drive toward autonomy, in my own child. ¡°Not this¡± is a launch pad.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:43 PM on September 27 [27 favorites]

Try this one.
posted by axiom at 5:09 PM on September 27 [3 favorites]

I enjoyed this essay very much and have sent Kattullus¡¯s comment link to friends.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:20 PM on September 27 [2 favorites]

What¡¯s fascinating to me is that I wasn¡¯t like this at all. I can¡¯t ever remember looking at clothing and thinking it would help me be a person I wanted to be. I am trying right now and can¡¯t remember a single article of clothing anyone else in elementary school wore. I can think back fondly onto articles of clothing I owned but not with this emotional attachment. Essays like this are a window into a mind I¡¯m eager to see through.
posted by lepus at 6:51 PM on September 27 [6 favorites]

after seeing the film ¡°American Graffiti,¡± I decided

wild style
posted by HearHere at 4:02 AM on September 28

Axiom, that one worked! Thankyou! Idon't know why all the others were being so stubborn!

When I was a kid I mostly wore clothes handed down from my stepsister or sometimes my mother and her friends - those were the best - but I can't remember ever having any real sense of what I wanted to wear myself. I definitely had no idea about brands, other than the brief period me and my stepsister used to go shopping in town and I was obsessed with the cat t-shirts they sold in Top Shop. I think I owned at least half a dozen at one time.

Ah, Top Shop. What a loss for British high streets.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 4:36 AM on September 28 [3 favorites]

The writer is just a few years younger than me and we share the existence (as children and young adults) of investing clothing and appearance with reverential awe. I went to a private school on scholarship, which probably primed the pump as I observed the (mostly) upper middle class kids around me. But growing up in front of a TV set was the IV tube that fed me the illusions.

I too was convinced that the right shoes, shirt, makeup look would somehow completely change my life. That fantasy went on for decades. I no longer believe in it and I¡¯m happy to have seen the end of it. But the author¡¯s account of this kind of Western girlhood is a good reminder of a past I have no wish to return to.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 7:50 AM on September 28 [6 favorites]

I should add that supermarket magazines like Seventeen and Mademoiselle were fantasy delivery vehicles as well. For kids who feel out of place, Western culture offers thousands of ¡°solutions.¡±
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 7:53 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]

Haven¡¯t read this YET but Kushner is one of my favorite authors and is incredibly fucking cool.
posted by youthenrage at 10:05 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]

Great read. "If I had loved myself as I was, I might not be who I am"...loved this line. It speaks to that push/pull between the "love yourself" ethos and the restlessness that leads you to grow into something different. Both concepts are valid, and vital in their own ways.

It also reminded me of how when I was I second grade, I had this idea in my head for the coolest look ever: purple overalls, red lipstick and a ponytail. Alas, my hair was never long enough for a proper ponytail, lipstick was absolutely not an option, and I never would have had the nerve to ask my mom for purple overalls. Wonder if that girl lives on in a parallel universe.
posted by Molasses808 at 12:09 PM on September 28 [4 favorites]

What¡¯s fascinating to me is that I wasn¡¯t like this at all. I can¡¯t ever remember looking at clothing and thinking it would help me be a person I wanted to be. I am trying right now and can¡¯t remember a single article of clothing anyone else in elementary school wore.

Same - I don't really "do" fashion. I wear clothes because nudity is socially unacceptable, and because sometimes it's too cold not to, but otherwise I decide what to wear based largely on "whatever doesn't itch". I do have to skew business casual for the day job and go with "thrift-store hipster" outside work, but never really was interested in The Latest Trends when I was a kid. (My mother let slip once that she'd been looking forward to when I was a teenager so we could have mother/daughter bonding moments over shopping, but then I turned out to be a bookworm who didn't give two shits about fashion and she was a bit disappointed in that.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:48 AM on September 29 [2 favorites]

He was trapped in a haircut he no longer believed in. I grew up a solid decade afterwards, but I get the same sentiments. I certainly noticed other people's clothes. My parents weren't exactly hippies, but I had 5 brothers and sisters, so they money divided between each of us in terms of clothing budget wasn't always a lot. I had a friend who almost never wore the same pair of shoes more than once a month, so the differences were pretty stark.

"If I had loved myself as I was, I might not be who I am" Agree. That's an important sentiment that we are who we are and since time machines don't exist we have to live in a world of reality, dreams, and regrets.

As an aside, I thought it was interesting at what was not longed after in the article - entry to UC Berkley - often one of the highest rated public universities in the US outside of the actual Ivy League. Something unmentioned happened there. Regular kids go to a UC satellite school.

Also the brand grandma sent (Danskin) still exists and is a cheapie brand 50 years later. No idea how it was considered in the 1970s. Cycles of fashion indeed.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:12 AM on September 29 [2 favorites]

Ooooo, that was so good, and I remember so much of it just as described! She's a couple of years younger than I am, but we had nearly identical clothes childhoods. I remember a lot of those described shoes. Clogs, for sure, with, yes, concur: the braided leather strap across the instep. Candies, of course. Dr. Scholls! Of course Converse hightops. The cotton Chinese maryjanes that lasted ten minutes before falling apart, yes! I even had the yen for red + yellow she mentioned: red is the best color, and red looks its best accented with yellow, was my theory. Best to stride out into the world in the confidence one can achieve only when dressed in the colors of a McDonald's fry box.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:23 PM on September 29 [4 favorites]

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