Recently my sister told me about an experience she had with her son, who turned five last December. She had to go grocery shopping, and she took J with her. J chose to wear his all-black ninja costume (without the do-rag, sadly). They got to the store parking lot, and J spotted a young schoolmate. "I don't want to wear this outfit in the store," he blurted suddenly, nervously.
"Lots of people go shopping in their ninja outfits," my sister said, not wanting to go home. And so they shopped.
Of course I laughed my ass off, but then I felt sad. Were these J's first stirrings of self-consciousness? That's horrible. How few years we enjoy free of that ridiculousness. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it serves a fabulous social function, but...FUCK IT. It just pisses me off.
I suddenly imagined myself, the Barefoot Strumpet [check out the Barefoot Bandit], shoeless in the Durham Market, my hair its usual overblown-brunette-dandelion mess, possibly wearing an outfit picked out by my three-year-old niece (here my imagination fails, unaccountably).
Why should I give a fuck? In fact, I am generally a don't-give-a-fuck kind of chick. I want to weep for all the times we have to give a fuck when it really shouldn't matter. Is that what grown-up means?
I'm going to start giving less of a fuck. Count me out of that game!
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Makes me wonder when my self-consciousness kicked in - I've always been self-conscious about my body, but I figured my clothes were always going to be a little different. New York, maybe, when I realized that I had absolutely nothing to wear to the fundraisers and theaters, which were often a part of life with my boyfriend at the time. Maybe that was it.
ReplyDeleteA has exhibited very little self-consciousness about her clothes. Although she's never expressed much interest in wearing the princess stuff out in public, so I suppose we've never encountered the situation. She picks her own clothes for the most part, and while I think mixing pink and red and purple is a hair's breadth from hideous, she wears it proudly. I encourage it.