I did have various style phases: 7th grade, wanted to be (and was!) Different. 8th grade, wanted to be (and was!) Just Like Everyone Else. But in my memory, I just felt like it and did it.

I was a cute kid: [link] but my mom was a model before she met my dad, and I really bought into the idea that she was what I could never live up to. Factor in that she is tall, lanky, and has no bosoms (basically the opposite of how I'm built), and my Body Image Demons had a specific person to point to so they could say "Why don't you look like THIS?"

So here I am at 41, and when my mom saw a picture of my wedding dress [link] her reaction was "Wow! I would love to wear that dress myself!" And my reaction? (Which was in my head, because I am not *always* a dick.) "Lady, that dress would look RIDICULOUS on you. It's cut for a woman who has curves and a most ample bosom." (Seriously, my rack looks AMAZING in that dress.) (Now, there are MANY dresses she can rock the hell out of that *I* could not wear, precisely because of how she is built.)

And when I realized my reaction was *not* self-loathing, or "Yeah, she really would look way better than me in that dress," I thought -- where did those Body Image Demons go? I didn't hear them leave. Huh.

Damn, that is a gorgeous dress and you will look amazing in it!

But in my memory, I just felt like it and did it.

This was me. I stole my dad's flannel shirts, shopped at Structure, a men's clothing store, wore bandanas and engineers hats and muslim hats. The only time I felt traumatized by how I "looked" was when one of my best friends mocked me for wearing "the same clothes" every day, because I was raised that if it wasn't dirty, it didn't need washing, so I had some sweaters and overshirts that I loved that were over my other clothes, and therefore I treated like outerwear, like jackets, and wore quite often.

And even now that I am overweight, the people who know me just see me, and they're always telling me how nicely I clean up and how cute I look, so I know that they're just seeing me as I am, my personality, and not the skinny seventeen year old me that I still aspire to be, and that all the criticism is self-inflicted (and mom-inflicted). I still delete every company photograph that I can get away with, though.

I feel bad mostly for my mom, whose photos of me clearly show that she thought I was a damned sight to see during my stint in the Army (yo, I used to be HOT) and used to tell me proud stories of how people would take pictures of me playing in the fountains in Boston. But we share genes and are now both chubby bunnies. I knew my glory days were over when the carpenter mistook me for her. That burned, and then I felt guilty for feeling angry. Because I love my mum's child-proof edges, despite that her weight causes her pain. She's my mum, in whatever incarnation. And I'm Julie, whether I'm hot and skinny or well past Rubenesque.

Damn, that is a gorgeous dress and you will look amazing in it!

I saw it in copper first, and it really made me gasp. I think I said, "This is AMAZING!" But copper is not a great color on me. So I kept looking for dresses, but kept going back to look at the copper one, and at some point I realized it came in that blue, which is spectacular.

I was never tied to the idea of a white wedding dress, although if I found one that made me gasp, I would have been all over it. I asked Tim how he felt about me not wearing white, and he was kind of waffle-y...until I showed him the dress. He hesitated for about 3 nanoseconds, and said "Get that dress. NOW."

It fits perfectly and just needs to be shortened, for lo, I am a wee tiny person when it comes to off-the-rack clothing.

That dress is gorgeous, and you must be gorgeous in it!

ION, damn, Scandal.

How does the cloth feel on that dress, Teppy? I'm leery of anything polyester because I dislike the way that feels against my skin.

Also in Body Demons, puberty was quite generous to me, and my mother was horrified at the way my bustline came in. The little shits that are middle-school boys didn't help with my self-conciousness of my developing figure. Smocks were very popular at that age, and that's all my mother wanted me to wear, so as to hide me. We had an immense fight in college when I bought a black velour top that was the opposite of smockish. She never came out and said anything about looking slutty, but she was certain I was wanting *that* kind of attention.

My relationship with her was fraught. Her funeral was fairly revelatory when I found out my sisters had issues with her as well.

How does the cloth feel on that dress, Teppy? I'm leery of anything polyester because I dislike the way that feels against my skin.

It's not scratchy (I worried that it might be, because the fabric is shimmery), but it's definitely a manmade fabric. It's not soft like cotton or silk, but it's comfortable.

My face looks relatively similar to how it always did, but everyone thought they were raising a short and dumpy girl who might never see puberty. Which they were fine with, and since my big external pressures were all academic (my mother has never accepted how bright she is, in that way that expects every one to live up to it, and has always thought she was unattractive (six packs weren't in vogue on women at the time, and she reached her 5-8 much more quickly than I did) and so no one had to be pretty (although they really really thought my sister was--it was never an issue to not live up to that)--not physical, not social, and the pressure I made up for myself was to be able to beat everyone up, which was indulged by more people than you'd expect.

My sister is/was invested in my looks. I'm not sure how to process that, but since I do nothing much in order to look good, I can't feel like much of a failure.

As for gender performativity--I felt that being a girl was the best possible scenario, since it meant I could do anything, wear anything, be anything. Whereas boys had so much they couldn't do or wear. I was called sir regularly until I went blonde and it annoyed me mostly because having DDs, lips half the size of my face, or wearing skirts and earrings didn't seem to affect people's first impressions. But in jeans, loose shirts, and a box cut? I've deliberately passed as male before, and I can't see what the downside really is/was.

It is starting up again, which...yeah, weird. I like to give people shit for it because giving strangers shit is my hobby.