Image Problems

I'm not exactly a "fashion victim." You tend to see the same thing on me all the time: cargo shorts (tan or black), short sleeve shirt (t-shirt, maybe a polo), sweatshirt, ball cap, sandles. The exception, Sunday at church, is usually just about as predictable: tan, navy or black casual pants, sweater or maybe a rugby, and again, the sandles.

Believe it or not, though, I'm very conscious of my appearance, not to mention the other ways I present myself.

I remember when I was a kid, going to a school full of people that had more money (a lot more money) than me. Appearance mattered. I never had the trendy hair cut, I never had Polo shirts, I never had designer jeans. I wore the same couple of pairs of shoes to everything. When I was old enough to shop for myself, I put a lot of time and work into choosing clothes that I thought looked fashionable. I had the baggy pants, pink shirts, skinny ties, the whole thing.

And it made no difference at all. My school mates weren't having any of that. "Those aren't real Polo are they?"

Somewhere around 15, I started hanging out more with people from working-class families. Girls dressed punk or hippie, guys with long hair that idolized Ozzy and the Crue. These friends were perfectly content to sit around, noodling on the guitar, wearing ripped up jeans and t-shirts. I had one friend in particular, a girl from near Midland, MI (she'll know I mean her if she reads this), who gave out the best compliment: "That's you." When you said, did, or wore something that was just naturally in keeping with your character, instead of playing to the crowds, she'd tell you it was cool - "That's you."

My jeans got worn and ripped, I drew and wrote on them, I traded in my skinny ties and pink shirts for surf and concert shirts, my hair got long. The more I enjoyed "being me," the more conscious I became of, well, trying to be me. Sometimes I was trying way too hard.

Someone asked me once about my painted toes: "What do the guys on the hockey team think of that? They don't give you a hard time?" I shook my head. "No, they don't say much about it. They've all seen me fight."

My personal style slowly became personal statement. What I should have said was, "I pride myself on being so tough that I can do a couple of 'feminine' things and no one dares to give me shit for it."

Besides my toes, my long hair, my sandles, I've employed various types of music (rap and metal around up-tight people, classical and jazz around the rock and roll crowd), art, stories about hockey fights or sketchy friends. I once asked a ranting anti-semite how he knew I wasn't a Jew, just to see if he had the nerve to risk a fight. He didn't. A week later, when he was ranting about the "camel jockeys," I told him about my real life Assyrian grandpa. Eventually, he admitted that he just liked to run his mouth, but that he didn't really mean anything by it. Confrontation can be beautiful thing.

Some days I worry, though: am I being me, or am I playing a series of characters? After trying too hard to fit in, and failing at it, am I trying to hard to fit out? Is who I am so situational that it changes depending on who I'm trying to cajole or intimidate? If my friend saw me today, would she still say "That's you?"