on wednesdays we (don’t) wear…

There was a time when I would downright refuse to wear pink.  Or frills.  Or anything girly for that matter.  My parents never tried to force pink, frilly girly clothes onto me, but I suddenly refused to wear half the clothes I already had.  I was 8 or so at the time, I do believe.  This was my ‘grey phase’.  I’d only wear the most boring androgynous of clothes.  And throw a tantrum about it.

Pretty hard to believe now, right?

To me, pink represented Those Girls.  The ones who’d snigger and laugh at me for putting my hand up in class, call me names for being ‘that horse obsessed kid‘.  (I was that horse obsessed kid.  I just re-read this post my mum wrote years ago and it genuinely made me cry!).  Anyway, Those Girls were the ones with an interest in clothes and makeup and an awareness of boys years before I had.  All pretty normal, but to me they were the Gretchen Wieners and Regina Georges of the playground.  I didn’t like them.  And they didn’t like me either.  Those Girls were cool, I was not.  Boyyyy was I not cool.  I had my friends and I was a happy kid though, I loved playing out all the time!  Games of Man Hunt and bike rides every night (before going to the stables)… what could be better? I most certainly wasn’t a shy child either; probably too mouthy for my own good most of the time.  I was just absolutely, stubbornly determined not to be like them.

Those Girls wore pink.

Pink symbolised extra girliness.  I’d happily wear dresses and have long hair, but pink was a step too far.  If Those Girls were gonna ridicule out of me for smelling of horses (I didn’t FYI, we did own a bath obviously), then I was gonna make sure I lived up to their ‘weird horse obsessed girl’ expectations.  You really don’t need details of my weirdness… I fear you’d be frightened away and never return!  So yeah, pink was out of the question for me.  I think my main ‘grey phase’ lasted under a year, but it took me a while to become fully comfortable with ‘girly’.

Looking back now, I can see that my ‘problem’ (I hesitate to label it a ‘problem’, as many kids go through real problems) wasn’t with feeling like I ought to be ‘girly’ and couldn’t.  It was putting on a front out of pigheadedness really.  Strange how even as kids, we try to mould ourselves into a character we want to assume, isn’t it?

Let’s be clear, I’ll admit that I threw a few nasty verbal punches back too that I’m not proud of.   I’m good friends with one of Those Girls now, after making up a couple of  years later.  We now laugh about our insults back in the day.  Funnily enough this friend is also the one I first watched Mean Girls with only a year or so ago.  I was late to pop my Mean Girls cherry, ok?  Funny how that came about.

So yeah, now I’ll happily wear pink and make pink clothes and wear pink lipstick and have no problem with all things ‘girly’, if you couldn’t already tell.  Shirt pictured is my mum’s from the H&M sale last year, if anybody’s interested.  I’d say it’s as obnoxiously pink as it gets.

I seem to wear more blue than any other colour now, but not out of childlike obstinance.  It goes with my eyes *insert hair flick emoji here*

lily kate x

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