My friend, Sterling, has written another illuminating blog post, which I am once again hijacking for my own purposes. Sterling discussed women’s fashion: who decides, who plays and who cares. I strung together a few ideas to post as a comment, but after typing two paragraphs I thought about something else…
I thought about Friday afternoon. I took my 12 year-old son to a Vans store for shoes. It’s been more than two weeks so he had yet again blown through his kicks. Honest to god I think his voice is changing too. I rarely restrict my kids’ clothing choices. My son’s situation is slightly different. Because he spent so many years away from school and school playgrounds, and the fact that he doesn’t understand his peers, I do intervene every now and again. “Are you sure?”
“Why do you care what everybody else thinks?” And then we had to go there…
“Buddy, the only reason I care is because you already feel apart from.” I told him that there’s a difference between doing his own thing and feeling rejected, ostracized and less than. Unfortunately, social acceptance is often determined, or at the very least influenced, by external presentation. I completely support his choice to wear whatever he wants, and if whatever grief he got wouldn’t crush him, I’d buy him any pair of shoes he wants. I told him that he needs to find an acceptable level of rejection and self-acceptance that allowed him to express himself.
Sterling was talking about women finding identity, power and acceptance as a matter of fashion; I was having the same conversation with my 6th grade boy. My son wants to step on the playground before morning bell to smiles that say “cool” and not “idiot.” He wants to have the confidence that Lilly has with Her Purple Plastic Purse – to wear her proverbial “crazy sunglasses and red cowboy boots” not in defiance but in freedom. We all struggle to find just the right measure of self-expression and conformity. And I imagine that for some of us that still looks a lot like it did in middle school.
