What are you, twelve?

I’ve been feeling like I’m twelve a lot lately. I remember a lot about being twelve. It was the first time I started to play around with make up and fashion. Here I am on fast approach to 26 and all I can think is how I am stuck at age 12. I didn’t know how to do my make up then and I don’t know how to do it now. I often ask my sister to do my make up for me when I’m going out for on a special date. Every once in a while I’ll play around with the stuff, usually I just feel like I make my face look worse. Its funny, make up is supposed to make me feel pretty isn’t it? Instead it just makes me feel like I’m trying to hide from something or like I’m trying too hard.

I’ve never really been a high maintenance girl in that respect. I’ve never put too much thought into an outfit or how my hair should be worn. As far as fashion was concerned I lived in a Hollister bubble for three years. Working as an associate there, as far as I knew or cared, all that I really needed for an outfit was a pair of skinny jeans, a flannel, maybe a cardigan, and some flip flops. It was simple, which I liked. I’ve never been one to fuss over jewelry and ruffles, high heels and the such. I always had a rule of thumb, if I couldn’t wear it in the rain, then I had no business wearing it… kind of a weird rule of thumb now that I think about it.

I think somewhere during my adventures through adolescents I adopted this mentality of ease and comfort. I got this notion in my head that boys liked simple. The idea was to look good but not look like I had to try hard to look good, which translated to the T-shirt and jeans mantra. By all means I would have a few fancy pieces in my arsenal, but I’d only bring the big guns out if the guy earned it. I remember I had a guy tell me once that I was the kind of girl you could take to the demolition derby on a Thursday and the opera on a Friday, I took it as a compliment.

And yet why have I had such a sudden falter in my style? Me thinks its because I recently dated someone who dressed much nicer than I did. I don’t know how much he spent on clothing but it was a great deal more than I did. Suddenly my Hollister jeans and white lacey tank tops weren’t so great anymore, especially whenever I’d go walking around with mister designer jeans.

For a short time I was able to temper my insecurities, and why not, he was looking at me with those baby blues and telling me how pretty he thought I was all the time. I would’ve gone around wearing a paper sack if he’d just kept looking at me like that. It wasn’t until I met his friends and their wives… all the gorgeous, sophisticated, elegant, and poised wives. They all had such a style about them that just screamed grown up, confident, and independent… Suddenly my wardrobe felt so juvenile…

After returning home from a short vacation with he and his friends, I ran off to the mall with my sister, who unlike myself, has her finger on the pulse of what’s in. I spent quite a bit of money trying to make a little revamp in my style, it will likely take years to purge some of the Hollister stuff I have collected over the past three years.

The irony behind it is that even after I bought all these clothes, which in some way or another were supposed to impress my new beau, the exact opposite happened. My new clothes were supposed to make me feel pretty, they were supposed to make me feel like I was good enough to stand by this cool guy who dressed so well, and while he once looked at me with eyes so deep and compliments a-plenty while adorned in my adolescent and ill thought attire, here I was in my new well thought out garb, begging for some sort of sign of approval and I got a lack-luster, “you look nice.” In two short days the budding romance that had so much promise withered into an unforeseen cliché ending, pity.

I think the rejection has me feeling like I’m twelve though. These clothes yielded the exact opposite response that I wanted… do I really know that little about fashion? I am an uncertain twelve year old, trying on clothes every other night, trying to figure out how these girls, excuse me, women put outfits together. How do they carry themselves with such an air of confidence? How in the world am I supposed to be as confident as them when these clothes couldn’t even help me keep a man? Oh well, maybe it’ll make more sense when I’m thirteen…