Clothing, Styles, and WEARING WHAT YOU WANT

Hello beautiful! I hope you've had an amazing week! Today's post is going to be about clothing, aesthetics, and feeling confident wearing what you want to wear. I've spent some time over the past few months trying to develop my own personal style. I wore a uniform at my old school, but at my new school, there's not much of a dress code. It feels like somebody just handed me the reigns to a personal style carriage, already moving at 50 miles per hour, when I started going to a school with no uniform.

I understand that clothing is a big insecurity and point of self consciousness for a lot of teenagers, and a lot of the less common, alternative styles usually bear the brunt of criticism and ridicule for the way they dress. That honestly baffles me. Clothing is supposed to be a way for people to express themselves, or to just wear what makes them feel comfortable (or at least it would be in an ideal world). In this post, I'm going to touch on some aspects of clothing insecurities, and prove to each and every one of you that what you wear should be for you and only you!

But first....

A DISCLAIMER (because who doesn't love a good disclaimer?)

In this post I'll talk a bit about how some styles are very popular and normal in schools and online while others are made fun of and ridiculed. I'm not here to bring down the popular styles when I say that the less popular ones deserve to be respected; that's not at all the point of this post. Whatever your clothing choices may be, they should be respected.

AND NOW: The Rest of The Post! (And the crowd goes wild! "Woohoo! The disclaimer is over! We made it!")

Financial Aspect

Money was the first thing that came to my mind while brainstorming for this post. It feels like you have to have a bottomless wallet to "stay in style" these days. Dandy hoodies are close to $100 and Lululemon leggings can even go beyond that. To me, these numbers are absolutely insane to spend on an article of clothing, but that's beside the point. If your financial situation doesn't allow you to spend that type of money on clothes, that is not something that you should feel bad about. A $10 hoodie from the thrift store works pretty much just as well as the brand new ones that are ten times the price.

A very strange thing that I've noticed some teenagers will do to each other is judge each other's styles by how much their outfit costs. I've been lucky enough to never have experienced this, but if there is someone out there that has, I am truly so sorry. Like I mentioned earlier, clothes can be for expressing your personal style, or just for comfort. In my opinion, no one needs to be spending outrageous amounts of money on clothes. If you are in the place where you are able to do that, that's fine as well , and I'm absolutely not shaming you for that. But no one should be judged because of how much they chose to spend on their own clothes.

Body Types and Clothing

Something else about your clothes that people will comment on is how your clothes look with your specific body type. For example, if a girl has more curves, they might be told to cover up more that someone who is more thin. Joking, backhanded comments aside, this is such a disgusting way to talk to someone. Let's be honest with ourselves. The reason we're told what to wear on our own bodies is because other people (men) can't control themselves if we look too "provocative."

I'm feeling like going off on a little tangent. "Boys will be boys," is just an excuse for boys to get away with anything that they do to women and girls. Wearing a fancy outfit isn't an invitation for someone else to do whatever they want with you.

Anyways...

No matter how your body looks, how much you weigh, or whatever people will think of you, you are the one wearing your clothes, and you are the one living in your own body. You get to make those decisions for yourself.

"Church/modest outfit inspo", Pinterest, Hello Kitty_8

Modesty

This one is a bit more general, and I have three main reasons for why someone would wear more modest clothing: personal preference, parental rules, and religious reasons. I would consider myself a modest dresser, and I think my reasons for that are a mix of the three that I have listed here.

To anyone else that likes to dress more modestly, you don't have to explain to anyone why you do so. It could be one of the reasons that I listed above or another one. Maybe you just get cold really easily, and you prefer wearing long sleeves. It doesn't have to be that serious. The same goes for those of you who like to show more skin when you dress. You should cover as much or as little skin as you feel comfortable with.

I really hate the way that people will make assumptions about your character based on the way that you dress. During my planning for this post, I saw a Facebook post that correlated your spiritual health with your skirt length. There was a diagram, a spectrum, and everything. I am just barely exaggerating when I say my blood was boiling. That was probably one of the most infuriating things that I've seen on the internet, and that's saying something!

The message that I want to leave everyone with today is the same message that I started with, but with a little spin on it. Wearing what you feel comfortable in is something that I want to emphasize, but I also want to let you know that you don't have to fit into a specific category or aesthetic, like coquette, downtown girl, streetwear, or dark academia. You can be a mix of which ever ones come naturally to you, or you can be your very own style that doesn't fit into any other box. You wear your clothes for you and nobody else!

Remember, if you ever need a hand, girl, let me help!