Real Talk: Hypocrisy and Hi-Lo’s

*Additional photos of clothing/accessories will be added to within a week of posting, since I’m working with only one of my closets*

I was a jerk as younger-me when it came to trends that others liked that I found to be beneath me. Not that I’d stop being friends with someone if they were interested in whatever caused me to hipster-scoff, but there would be shade thrown in their general direction.

And for that, I’m a lowly hypocrite, because more often than not, I’d finally come around to stop hating whatever it was that the rest of society embraced long ago. It’s totally science, so at least I’m normal?

The kicker is that this isn’t something that stopped around a given age when I had some epiphany amount what an awful person I am for judging people for their decisions – the most recent example is from January 2014. Aka, I’m a jerk-faced 19 year old, too.

1. Hi-lo’s:

The mullet dress/skirt was what I first dubbed any clothing article that had a higher cut in the front, with the back being inexplicably longer. Much sass was geared at my favourite boutiques for carrying an abomination to fashion.

Then I tried on a mullet dress.

And I looked majestic.

Now they’re a staple of my wardrobe – affectionately called butt-capes – hanging in both of my closets:

2. Floral print:

In early high school, floral print became fashionable. Convinced I would look like wall paper from my childhood, I stayed away from botanical clothing and accessories.

This trend was met with confusion – I couldn’t fathom why person would want to dress like their grandmother’s couch. More of a raised brow than an eye-roll, if you will.

Considering I was less revolted by the trend, I wasn’t as appalled when floral print slowly made its presence in my closets, reaching a point where I would prefer floral to other patterns:

3.  Mary-Kate and Ashley:

Not that gendered toys were anything that ever crossed my mind as a child, but looking back, I’d say I had a good balance between boy and girl toys (kudos to parents on that). Much like a miniature Toys’R’Us circa 2001, my play area was littered with a large collection of Barbies and Polly Pockets, stuffed animals, legos, sticker books, science experiment kits, outdoor sports stuff, bug catching kits, ballet things, educational computer games, video games, Harry Potter, Pokemon and Sailor Moon merch, and an array of  fiction and non-fiction books.

You could categorise me as either a tom-boy or a girly-girl, both worked.

But this isn’t a rant about gendered toys – it’s about my first guilty pleasure.

For those born between early to mid 1990’s, I’d say that at least one thing from the Mary-Kate and Ashley cash cow of merchandise has been a part of your childhood.

That being said, I despised then. They weren’t saving the world, they didn’t have special powers, and they screamed a lot to express as many emotions as possible which is annoying regardless of who you are. To me, they were heavily scripted reality tv with zero substance.

Was that sentence redundant?

I digress.

Then everything changed when my mum’s friend’s daughter brought along her Mary-Kate and Ashley dolls to our house. Since she was younger than me, I played along with her toys so as to not be rude to our guest. I wasn’t pleased, but after I while I realised that there was no basis for my disgust in the franchise, which led to my obsession.

Whatever I could get my hands on, I wanted it.

I was like Squidward, when he finally tried a krabby patty, but with 100% less exploding thighs.

4. My choice of university:

I pride myself on being organised and knowing what I’m going to be doing for the next 10 years of my life. It’s school for the next decade, but that still sounds impressive, no?

There wasn’t any question regarding what university I’d attend once I finished CEGEP; McGill was in Montreal and it was in our family, so it made sense. They teach the program I’m looking to pursue, from ungrad to post-grad – so I was set.

Then I received a small purple booklet in the mail over the winter break this past year.

Gorgeous campus, small class sizes, a program more fit to my future, and loads of school spirit.

I could live on campus but not have to leave the province. Bishop’s sounded perfect.

Full honesty, toying with the idea of being a Gaiter instead of a Redman caused me more anxiety than it should have – but what would you expect when you’ve “known” your next step for nearly five years and it suddenly might change?

In the end, I made my decision to stock up on purple, and I’ll be heading to Lennoxville at the end of August. By no means do I regret this decision, but you have to agree that this one has more impact on my life than deciding to wear a floral hi-lo dress designed by Mary-Kate and Ashley.

Stuff That’s Near My Wall: WTF

Want to know why I love ordering stuff online? It’s cause it’s like you’re sending yourself a present, and who doesn’t love that?

I’ve been making online orders for over a year now, usually for books or tea for me or for when I have birthday or Christmas shopping to do.

However, clothing is something that I’m much more hesitant to purchase since my legs are a bajillion miles long (give or take a few inches) and I’d prefer to try something on before buying it.

Because it’s apparently necessary this week to talk about how much time I spend on the internet, you should know that I have wasted more hours on youtube that some people do courting their future spouse. A statistically significant portion of that time has gone to watching Joe Santagato’s videos. Despite my of love clothing, I waited a year after I found out there was Santagato TV merchandise, since I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t making an impulse buy.

Oh, I also wanted to be able to pay for it with my own money, and since I had my first job only last summer, the purchase was  delayed until this winter (I was busy with school and forgot about it).

Over the winter break, I ordered one of the sweaters:

 

Having sent the order to my mum’s house – and then spending the following week at my dad’s – I wasn’t the one to receive the parcel when it came in. When I got home from school the following Friday, switching back to my mum’s house, I was excited to open my order.

That excitement was replaced by confusion when I found two grey envelopes waiting to be opened.

Both had my name on them.

But one was heavier than the other. I started with this one, figuring that my sweatshirt would have been the bulkier of the two.

My assumption was correct, and so I got to opening the next parcel.

For the record, my shirt size ranges from small to medium, depending on the brand.

The shirt in the second envelope was 2XL.

And bright green.

 

WTF indeed.

The irony aside of someone purchasing a 2XL shirt asking where the food is, I still had no clue as to why I was the recipient of this … fashion statement.

Rooting around the remnants of my order, I found the invoice for the shirt. Scanning the sheet of paper, I found the location that it was actually supposed to be sent to.

It wasn’t Montreal.

It wasn’t another part of Canada.

It wasn’t even within North America.

It was supposed to go to Australia.

Clearly the same place.

Hopefully the person who was supposed to get the shirt in the first place has gotten a replacement at some point or another between January and now…

Sunday Best (An Aside)

With it being Easter yesterday, I got to see my church nearly full for a change.

I took a spot in the third from last pew with my family and a friend, a sea of unfamiliar people sitting in front me. Spending the majority of the time teaching in Church School has made it so even those who have been in the church longer than I’ve been alive to be mostly unknown faces.

Easter is the most important holiday of the Christian faith – without it, Jesus would just be some cool guy who taught about loving one another, and not much more.

You’d expect that with it being such a big deal that everyone would show up in their Sunday Best, on their best behaviour and not a hair out of line.

Seeing that this wasn’t so made me realise how superficial the concept of your “Sunday Best” is.

It’s not actually about the clothing. Regardless of how much I love getting all dolled up for a given occasion, God doesn’t care if you bought a new dress for church to match the Pantone swatch for this season.

If you believe in God, what matters is how you treat people and that you follow the whole love thy neighbour bit. You know, helping people out, giving what time or money you have to spare, and being forgiving.

If anything, what I realised is that Sunday Best should be synonymous with your actions and attitudes more than anything else. Since we’re used to the concept as clothing, think of it as if the quality of your actions were translated into the quality of your clothing – for every nice thing you do, for every time you were patient, for going above and beyond on anything you did for anyone – that would contribute to the outfit of your character.

Back to my third to last pew surrounded by unknown people: my new perspective picked out someone who volunteer tutors during the week at a community centre, another who sends 10% of their paycheque to the World Food Program, and someone else who spends every other year doing mission work in various countries around the world.

Is the above factual? Maybe. But that judgement is just as reliable as how I would have seen people based on their outer Sunday Best.

Stuff That’s Near My Wall: The Legging Collection

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong, but – do you own any normal pants?” – a question I got in macroeconomics, second semester, from the girl sitting next me.

I spent five years wearing a very strict uniform for high school.

Once I got out, I had to rebuild my wardrobe beyond my church clothes, weekend stuff, and summer clothing.

Being a dancer, I feel most comfortable in clothing that isn’t restricting – so that I can bust a move, if the mood strikes.

Since I don’t work, I hunted down clothing that wasn’t going to break the bank, even if I was using birthday and Christmas money that I had saved up.

Over time, I accumulated an array of leggings, each pair crazier than the last, until I plateau’d into an insanity of patterns and metallics.

In the collection, I have my neutrals:

   

From there,  I went into more colours:

 

Then I went patterned:

 

And then metallic:

And finally, astronomical/sky pants:

 

Having gotten that many pairs of leggings over the course of a year has been a personal fashion-Genesis/exploration since I had been given the freedom to dress myself according to how I felt, not what a set of guidelines in my too small agenda dictated.

Also, it’s really easy to put together an outfit when you’ve got some flashy business going on in the leg-region and all you have to worry about is finding the right black top to go with it. Simple enough, if I do say so myself.

And finally, if you’ve wondered it while scrolling on through, yes, I have worn each and every pair of the above leggings in public, because I can rock it and I don’t care what others think if they judge me in my drunk-zebra leggings (third to last pattern pair).

And because you guys are awesome, here’s the full set in one shot:

Piece(s) out.