Fashion Memories--8th Grade Style

So Winona at Daddy Likey had this contest for the best description of adolescent fashion debauchery. And I was totally gonna enter. I totally felt like I could rack up the prize--which is something as divine as a Boyz II Men cd--and confess to my fashion sins at the same time. But here's the thing: I sat down to write the entry, and then my husband said something about needing the computer, and I got mad and stomped off to the bedroom (I'm a very dramatic wife) where I ate a plate of hot wings, watched Law and Order and fell asleep. And I forgot about it. So this brings us to now. The contest is over. I lost by default. I'm pissed. Mostly because I've never won anything (save a $28 raffle at a showing of The Princess Bride at W&M), but also because I wanted to talk about my fashion sins. And, honey, there are a lot of them.

So, without further adieu, I give you my favorite outfit as a 14 year old, and yes, the one I met my future husband in:

I call it Gothic Preppy Hillbilly with a Dream.

I guess I should explain. My dream as a kid was to be an actress. In New York. Or really anyway that wasn't southwest VA. I thought I looked the part, and by "looked the part" looked appropriately sullen and dangerous. Especially when I wore this ensemble:

Coral pique polo from the Gap that I literally stole out of my stepsister's closet. Seriously. I hated her at the time (I actually hated most people, come to think of it. Except for Billy Joe Armstrong. My future husband.). So I went over to my Dad's one Sunday when she wasn't home, and helped myself to a few polos and a few choice other items (more about that in a bit). So anyway, there was this polo. It was a size large. I was decidedly not large.

I wore this TUCKED IN and BLOUSED OUT into a pair of khaki JNCO pants. These things were skin tight at the top (I actually tucked the shirt into my underwear, which were velvet and from the clearance bins at Victoria's Secret--shoplifted those too) and flared out to a HUGE leg. I could seriously fit my waist into it, and did this as some kind of parlor trick (did I mention that I was slutty too?). I made my mom buy them for me at the Gadzooks in the West Towne Mall in Knoxville. I shopped there because I thought I was badass for getting my mom to drive me three hours to a mall. My mom didn't think I was badass. She thought I'd end up in military school, probably after committing a few misdemeanors.

With this, I wore a pair of Dr. Marten sandals that weighed in at about 2 lbs. each. I know this because my dad weighed them one Sunday in the middle of a Nascar race, and then proceeded to laugh it up with his buddies about my "clodhoppers." And you wonder why I was shoplifting and slutty....whatever. They were brown and made of braided leather. Hot.

Now to make up and hair. Despite my decidedly "New York actress" look, I couldn't get away from the Southern "big hair" thing. I hot rolled my hair every morning into sausage curls. Then I would flip my hair over, shove an accordian band into it while upside down, and then flip my head back up real fast so that everything flew back into a volumized torrent of fuzz and fluff. I would then coat it in half a can of LA Looks aerosol spray. I seriously wore a rats nest for about two years and considered it a style. God bless the South.

As for make-up, this was nothing too bad. My favorite lip gloss was Clinique Black Honey, and this was something my mother actually approved of. I also wore Urban Decay blue nail polish. I kept my nails painted with dark polish for so long that they got deprived of oxygen and turned yellow. Didn't know that can happen? Now you do.

As for jewelry, this was all stolen from my stepsister too. My favorite thing was a sterling silver dolphin ring that looked like it was literally wrapped around my finger. It was too tight, so when I took it off at night it left a red mark shaped like dolphin on my finger. I suffered for my art.

And this is the look that made my husband look at me one day at a PACE match and say, "I'm going to marry that girl." Actually, I think what he said was more like, "Dude, that chick has a nice rack." Because I did. And I still do. Some things, unlike bad fashion choices, never change.