sebastienne

That's fascinating. My perspective is somewhatdifferent, i think - after afairly confident and happy mid-to-late-teenage period of gothhood, when i was deliberately trying to align myself with a particular subculture as i felt it espoused my values (hell, i*was* 15!), i then a) got seriously emotionally fucked over in ways that stirred up a lot of fundamentally unresolved childhood identity/selfworth issues and b) got ME, soi for afew years tried desperately to struggle for a genuine sense of selfhood thatwas good enough. During which time i went terribly mainstream, bc i felt the illness marked me out enough - i didn't want to stand out more. Now, i don't necessarily think about anything other than clothing being a) practical (I live in jeans, mainly) and b) a valid projection of my fairly eccentric self (eg, the otherthingscould be *anything*, including nightwear, wolly jumpres, dresses, floaty hippy stuff, goth stuff, or some combination ofthe above.) And i'm lucky enough to conform if anything rathertoo much to cultural expectations of feminine smallness etc, so usually the thing that fucks me off is not being noticed, peoplewalking straight through me, that kind of thing. And interestingly enough, these days i'm increasingly more aggressive about it - no i won't get out of yourway justcos you're bigger than me/male/busy. And it's weird theways people react - like i've betrayed them, oram being deliberately antagonistic for not liking being stepped on. And somehow dressing *extra* noticeably just so i stand out more wd be just as much a betrayal ofself as dressing to fit in. does that make any sense, or have i wondered COMPLETELY off the point? Hmmm... :oP