#Also I wore a lot of graphic tees as a teen but my experience is not universal 🤔

[dollelujah]

as someone who processes dozens, sometimes hundreds of school photos a DAY for a living, please keep in mind the graphic tee trend in Monster High G3 reflects the audience to whom the dolls are aimed towards.

[spookygondolier]

I’ve been watching Everything’s Gonna Be Okay on Hulu (airs on Freeform) and it’s very very good! I was expecting to like it because I loved Josh Thomas’ other show Please Like Me, and this one is different for sure but also good! I appreciated how Please Like Me was not afraid to deal really directly with heavy issues like mental illness and suicide while also keeping a sense of humor (sometimes dark humor) and this one does similar things with grief and sexuality and navigating teenage relationships. Also the main characters include an interracial gay couple (both played by gay actors) and an autistic girl who is very vocal about being autistic (and about her “blossoming sexuality”) and played by an autistic actress (as are her autistic friends). Also *minor spoiler* in recent episodes she and one of her friends are girlfriends and their communication with each other is a++. All the teen girl characters very much feel like people I’ve known or my sister has known and not like a Typical TV Teen Girl. Also the lead male character is an entomologist and each episode is named after and features a different type of bug!

And it’s kind of fun and surprising to see some weirdly specific experiences reflected back at me (sometimes with minor differences) like: being 17 and hanging out with an autistic friend and deciding to try something sexual just to see what it’s like (while also thinking that it seems like an awful lot of touching) and approaching it almost like a scientific experiment as your friend walks you through each step of it in clear detail (with the main difference being that the characters in the show seemed to enjoy it while I decided it’s maybe Not For Me); roaming around a party silently drinking because you don’t know who to talk to or what to do; a friend/loved one suggesting new clothes for you to wear for an occasion and getting frustrated and upset as you immediately shoot down each choice by explaining why it wouldn’t work for you; watching a character do the exact same anxious/overwhelmed hand flapping/slight bouncing thing that I usually go hide in a bathroom to do. Also the character who did the last two things has a very similar fashion sense to what I wore in high school, down to the dark colors and patterned hand warmers (but minus the graphic tees and the old-timey hats) which I find pretty entertaining.

Anyways the show is good and funny and does some surprisingly bold things for an American sitcom on a network like Freeform! And I would recommend it as long as you’re not uncomfortable with really blunt and open discussions about sex and sex-related things, as well as some depictions of people clearly getting ready for sexytimes (no nudity though, but lots of making out). Also parental death is a major part of the premise and is a big part of the first couple episodes. There is also a situation in one episode involving questionable consent (one character is drunk, the characters are 17 and 18).

[sage-nebula]

I love myself. I love being myself. And I would not want to be anyone else.

It’s taken me so long to be able to say those first two things, and sometimes I still struggle, but for the most part it’s true. And I’m still discovering new things about myself all the time. It’s weird, because some things I took forever to discover about myself were things that took forever to discover about myself because I didn’t have access to the resources to help me. Like I didn’t realize that I was asexual until I was twenty-one and stumbled across a Wikipedia article about asexuality. I didn’t realize that I had fallen in love with my best friend until I was pretty much in college, which is ridiculous to me considering I look back on how I only went to our senior prom because I was jealous over the idea of her going to said romantic dance with a mutual friend of ours. They were only going as friends, but I felt strong jealously, like, “She should be going to that dance with me” and somehow did not put two-and-two together that being jealous that another girl was going to a romantic dance with someone else was a very not straight way to feel. (For the record, I was a third wheel basically the entire night even though we were supposed to be a big friend trio and it was no one’s fault but my own. I regret it, but I don’t blame my past self because I was a teenager and, as a teenager, I was well within my rights to do stupid things. It was part of the learning and growing process, and thus there’s no need to shame my past self over it. I’m still astounded that I didn’t realize how very not straight I was at that moment, but still.)

One of the recent things I discovered about myself at nearly twenty-nine is the fact that my preferred fashion style---my fashion style---is, and always has been, pretty grunge. I’ve answered meme questions on here before that ask similar questions, and I’m always like, “idk, comfortable and cool?” because I never knew what to say. And hell, when watching Queer Eye, whenever Tan would ask the champion of the episode who their style icon was, I never had an answer. But after I saw Captain Marvel, I realized that my style icon is Carol Danvers when she was wearing the leather jacket + the Nine Inch Nails shirt + the (ripped?) jeans + the flannel + the boots. You know, the “someone’s disaffected niece” look. I saw online that this was a grunge look. I saw a list of grunge traits. And what I saw was:

Oversized, baggy clothing

Muted colors

Makeup, if worn, is preferably dark and a bit smudged

Ripped jeans

Leather jackets and/or flannels

Converse shoes or Doc Martens boots

Band t-shirts

Messy hair, sometimes dyed bright punky colors

Pretty much all of those bullet points hit things I’ve always had in my own fashion sense. My hatred for skinny jeans is well documented; I’ve always worn baggy jeans, and oversized hoodies and often baggy t-shirts are my jam. I definitely prefer more muted colors (see my favorite shades of blue and green for examples) over very bright ones. Wearing makeup is a pain in the ass, but when I do wear it I wear dark eyeliner that looks a bit smudged due to how I apply it, and eye shadow and lipstick that aren’t very bright. Pretty much every pair of jeans I own is naturally distressed and ripped; my absolute favorite pair, which I’m wearing as I type this, has GIANT holes in both knees, and a smaller hole on the back thigh. This is because I’ve been wearing them since high school (they still fit!), and have just naturally worn these holes into them. They weren’t distressed at all when they were purchased for me about fourteen years ago, but now they’re very distressed, and also very beloved. They spark a lot of joy. I’m never getting rid of them.

I don’t have many flannels at the moment (though I have a couple), but I have several different leather jackets. I wore Converse shoes for YEARS, but unfortunately they offer no support and are the reason my achilles tendon is pretty much permanently damaged (might also be why I have knee crepitus as well), so I don’t wear them anymore and instead have legit tennis shoes instead (but ones that are black with white soles so I feel they still fit). However, I do have two different pairs of Doc Martens, one of which is a platform pair, and I love them to death, so. The fact that my preferred shoes were Converse and Docs before I even knew about this is pretty . . .

I used to wear band t-shirts almost exclusively in my teen and young adult years, and stopped pretty much only because I stopped going to concerts, and lost a lot of my band t-shirts to boot (though I do thankfully still do have a 10 Years one, and I hope to get the one currently on their website soon too). But I do have a 10 Years light jacket (super oversized of course), and replaced the band t-shirts with gaming t-shirts. I guess this would make me a bit of a geeky grunge? I don’t think that’s really a “thing,” but if people can invent things like “soft grunge” or whatever, then I feel this should be allowed. I am donating some of my gaming shirts to charity in a couple days because I don’t think I really want them anymore (either because they’re for games I don’t play but got them for free, or because I don’t really like the colors on them and also got them for free), but I still have quite a few of them. I’m a geek, I can’t help it, it’s just who I am.

And my hair is always messy no matter what I do. Even when I pin it up, it still looks a bit messy. It’s just the way it is. 

While I do shower every day and so I don’t fit the “greasy” part of the grunge criteria, and while I’m obviously not going to change myself to more closely fit the grunge criteria, it still felt like a huge “OOHHHHHHHH” moment for me when I realized this. It also makes it a bit easier to shop for fashion things, I feel, because I now have a starting point. I’m not sure this is a starting point that Tan France would approve of given that I am almost twenty-nine and so the “someone’s disaffected niece” look is one I feel that he would think I should not be striving for, but it’s not like I’m really striving for that look, but rather, that that look is who I am. Like it’s what calls to me. And you know what, if Karamo can live off Skittles and Coke every day of his life, I feel like I should be able to dress in a geeky grunge style every day of mine (excepting the days I’m at work since that doesn’t fit with the dress code there). Not that these two things are related, but hey. (Besides, I’m sure that Tan would help me find a way to make it work. Orrr he might try to steer me away from it. Or maybe a meeting point of both? Hmm. Who knows.)

Anyway, there’s no real point to this post. I just felt like making it. And I’m fine, or even happy, with looking like someone’s disaffected niece when I’m outside of work. Sure, I’m almost twenty-nine and therefore nearing thirty, but that doesn’t mean that I need to give up the things I enjoy or who I am, especially since in so many ways I’m still discovering them. You know, there’s this idea that permeates society that at some point you have to grow up and leave behind all the things you liked to do and wear in your younger years behind, but that’s ridiculous. No one magically changes into a boring, plain adult once they hit a certain age, and no one should have to. I still love video games. I still love series and things that I loved when I was a kid. I still like wearing graphic tees and ripped jeans and oversized headphones. I am still a mature, responsible adult despite all this. I still own my home, my car, and hold a steady 8:30am - 5:00pm, Monday through Friday job. People are complicated, they’re complex. You can be someone who enjoys silly, frivolous things like fandom and alternative fashion, and also be an adult who carries adult responsibilities. You never have to worry that you’ll get to an age where you should have yourself figured out by that point, or else you’ve failed, because life is an ongoing process and learning experience. You’re never too old to learn about yourself or embrace who you are. This is something I’ve been realizing with regards to myself and my own life, and it’s something I think so many people could stand to realize, too.

Anyway, this is just some personal rambling, so please DO NOT reblog this, or I’ll just delete the post so it won’t show up with the “keep reading” link is clicked anyway and also block you. It’s just something I wanted to get out of my head, and now I have, so I’m going to go get some sleep. Good night. ♥