Spandex is Dead: The story of my existential millenial fashion crisis and subsequent mental breakdown

     Getting a forward helix piercing is almost completely painless. (If you don’t know, the forward helix is the front flap of cartilage on the ear, just north of the tragus. Or just be a normal person and google it.) This year, my husband took me to get mine pierced. I had been drooling over it since I watched Arie’s season of The Bachelor (I know you watched it, too) and the contestant, Sienne, had hers done. It popped up again on actress Chrissy Metz, who plays Kate on This is Us, and I knew I needed to have it done someday. 
        He surprised me and took me to the piercing parlor in the mall after our three kids were asleep and under the care of his mom. At the parlor, I had my choice of earrings, but I selected a tiny, circular black stud and it was that choice that ultimately led me to one of the deepest existential crises of my millenial life. 
Two weeks after the piercing was done, the tiny rhinestone fell off the back post. I need to illustrate how tiny this tiny is. On a scale of atom to penny, we’re looking at a solid 2. This thing is about the size of a quarter of a grain of rice. It is so small that you can’t even feel it in your fingertips when you hold it. It doesn’t even have enough mass to activate the signals in the nerve endings on your fingertips! And if you drop it, you sure as hell aren’t gonna hear it hit the ground (I know this from experience.) After trying for at least forty-five minutes to reattach the earring, I just swapped it out to keep the hole open and decided to go back to the source. 
    It was a Saturday. It was February in Arizona, which meant beautiful weather. I decided to wear something typical me-- tribal print leggings, a black t-shirt and boots. 

I think it needs to be said, before I go on, that I had heard rumors that gen-z had been bashing on millennial fashion. “Side parts are out! Leggings are out! High waisted jeans! Acid wash everything! Chunky sneakers!” But until that day at that mall, I hadn’t seen proof of it. 

And then I did. 

I remember walking behind a teenage girl thinking how amazing her waist looked in her jeans (shout out to you, nice-waisted chick!). Then I realized, she wasn’t the only one. Everyone was wearing those jeans. And they all looked fly. No one, apart from me, was rocking spandex. 

Suddenly, my four-year-old leggings and black T felt like poison, burning my skin and branding me as one thing: old.  I could literally feel my flesh crawling. I felt so uncomfortable, almost as if I were naked. I had marked myself as a millennial (as if my five-year- old daughter holding my hand wasn’t enough proof) and being a millennial just  isn’t cool anymore. 

For anyone screaming virtually, “What’s the big deal?! It’s just clothes!” I’ll explain. Firstly, I agree that clothes are just clothes and that they don’t make a difference in the quality or character of a person. My closest friends all dress so differently than I do and I love them with my entire frozen heart. I don’t care what other people wear. I love everyone just because I believe that people have worth. People are special and everyone matters. 

But for myself, clothes are important. I have spent a lifetime hunting them, collecting them, caring for them, breeding them and loving them. Clothes have always been a source of happiness for me, maybe because my mom used to take me shopping at nights at the Galleria Mall in Henderson, NV and we would try on armfuls of clothes and advise each other and then she would spend way too much and say, “Don’t tell your dad,” or, “Leave the bags in the car for now,” with a wink. 

My mom is a quilter (that’s a topic for another essay) and she has always created a plethora of fabric scraps. I used to dive into her rubbermaid bins of frayed strips of beautiful cloth and use them to design clothes for my Barbie dolls. I started experimenting with pattern mixing, asymmetrical hemlines, and off-shoulder Barbie looks. I realized that there was something therapeutic about clothes.  They are art. They are self. They are beauty. This gradually morphed into fashion sketchbooks and Project Runway binge watching, but sufficeth to say: I love clothes. 

And that day in that mall, my clothes betrayed me. 

I got my earring replaced, which hurt like hell, and then my daughter and I raced out of there. I was about to break down. 

As soon as I got home, I texted my best friends about what had happened to me. My head was spinning. My babies hanging in color order in my too small closet were looking more like rats; rats that I wanted to exterminate. But no. Each one has a memory attached to it. The “Au Revior” shirt that I got at my beautiful coworker’s garage sale. The floral lace blouse that was all I had to wear for three days when my luggage got lost in Paris. The green dress that I wore to my college graduation, and then out clubbing in Las Vegas with my husband while I was pregnant with my oldest daughter.

These weren’t just clothes, they were me. And it took me going to the mall that day to have my earring fixed to realize that the me I had built over the years was no longer cool, edgy, or original. It was just blase. I was blase. I am blase. 

I wish I could give a really inspiring ending here like “I realized that I don’t need cute clothes to be a good person,” but I can’t. I already know that that is true, but clothes are such a big part of me, that feeling out of touch with them makes me feel out of touch with myself. I’ve never been one to succumb to trends for the trendiness of it. (I remember clearly telling my high school BFF that I didn’t like the monogram trend! Do you remember those tiny purses that just fit under someone’s armpit and they had someone’s initial on them? Ew.) But when I like a trend I absolutely embrace it (hello chokers!). 

While I am still solving my fashion equations, I do know that I am not in a place for a full fashion overhaul. I don’t have the time, money or really a reason to. I spend most of my time tucked away in my house with my little gypsies and a good book, but I do hope to someday have a reason to invest in some clothes that make me look and feel… like me. And I wouldn’t cry if leggings came back around either.