When I showed up at college just over 10 years ago, I immediately stood out. My Ottawa high school was straight out of a teen movie: popular boys popped their collars and stood around cars blasting Ja Rule. Cool girls, of which I was one, wore tight jean mini-skirts and padded bras.
The University of King’s College, a liberal arts school on Canada’s east coast, was more Dazed and Confused than She’s All That. The cool kids wore faded Phish T-shirts – a band I’d legitimately never heard of – and tie-dyed onesies. Even the city girls from Toronto were credit-card hippies dressed in $60 ripped tees from Urban Outfitters.
On the grassy patch of lawn in front of the library, undergrads smoked cigarettes and read Kierkegaard. I had entered some sort of alternative universe where it was sexier to improvise a jazz version of Heart and Soul than to have long eyelashes.
Decked out in a pink Lululemon jumpsuit and a high ponytail, I was a highlighter in a pack of pastels. Even when I tried to be a hippie, I couldn’t pull it off. I often wore my light pink La Senza bathrobe to morning lecture (very relaxed!) with a full face of makeup (very uptight!). To me, beauty meant effort.
In high school, I had never thought to experiment with my style. So long as I looked like a walking Guess ad, I was invited to the right parties and referred to as “hot” by older guys. But at King’s, my formula was less successful. The popular girls wore little makeup and constantly had bed-head. Their carefree aesthetic lent them a magnetic air of confidence. I studied their natural beauty like an anthropologist, yearning for their je ne sais quoi.
In second year, I started dating a guy who was my high school style soulmate: he wore golf shirts and was known to rock a hoodie under a blazer.
But by second semester, he started commenting on how I was always wearing “so many layers”. It was true; I lived in a house with three women whose idea of a good time was getting high and shopping at Value Village. Through fashion osmosis (and probably a lack of clean laundry), I started wearing their patterned leggings under ill-fitting skirts and leg warmers. My neck was always wrapped in a colorful scarf and I bought a bright orange, knee-length puffy winter coat. It felt great to bust out of my manicured cocoon, but the fact that my boyfriend wore cologne and ironed his shirts made me feel frumpy instead of beautiful.
For the first time in my life, my fashion choices were in opposition to the mainstream.
It wasn’t just my looks that had shifted. As I left my clothing comfort zone, I felt a knot in my personality begin to unravel. At parties, I no longer obsessed about whether my mascara was too clumpy or not. I lost myself in drum circles on pots and pans (I know, college …) and spent late nights dancing to Mr Roboto in dorm rooms. I still wanted male attention, but I no longer felt it hinged on having the most natural-looking fake tan.
The guy and I broke up near the end of term, and I took it really hard. I moved across the country for the summer, and Vancouver’s mountains and tall trees made me feel even more depressed and lonely. I spent most of my free time with a mohawked woman named Wini, smoking pot and lying around on a nude beach. Then, in a haze of sadness-fuelled disinhibition, I took a step that would have shocked my high school self: I asked Wini to shave my head. It turns out this was a very good idea.
I have never felt sexier or more empowered than when I had no hair. I stopped wearing a bra. I wore chunky plastic earrings. I sewed funky buttons on to second-hand clothing to add “panache”. I gained confidence from shedding my safety blanket of long hair and tight clothes, and it showed. I had more sex, too.
I knew that back on campus, friends would applaud my new look. To them, beauty meant originality. Though I had started to look more like a hedgehog than Sinéad O’Connor, they still oohed and aahed when I gelled my ’do into a soft mohawk or wrapped my head in colorful scarves.
When my high school friends saw me the next summer, they commented on how “arty” I’d become. The truth is I had never looked weirder. But I had also never felt more fearless.
These days, I dress more like my mom than Mama Cass. But the strength I gained from experimenting with my style in college stuck around. I no longer shop for self-esteem at makeup counters and malls. I can get ready in five minutes. I wear what feels good instead of what looks “hot”.
My advice is to get weird in college. You’ll learn that nothing looks sexier than total freedom.
