Healing my Inner Child Through Fashion.

Y'all be afraid to wear what you want...But me? I'm gone step.

A few months ago, I was grocery shopping. In the soup aisle to be exact. When a little girl who couldn’t have been older than eight walked up to me. I honestly forgot exactly what she said but it was something to the effect of how much she loved what I was wearing, I looked like a mermaid, and how much she loved the color pink. I thanked her and replied that pink was my favorite color as well! As I watched her bounce away, I came to a realization.

Some women dress for men, some for themselves, I however, dress for the little girls who love pink and ultimately, I dress for the little girl I once was.

I think fashion and style mean very different things for different people. Some engross themselves in it, following every trend, every designer, keeping up with everything that’s latest and greatest. Some take the Andy via The Devil Wears Prada approach and don’t really care what they put on as long as it’s comfortable and functional. Some people are in between. And some people have very alternative styles of fashion such as: vintage, punk, goth, etc. I think all sides say as much about a person as the other. Whether you care about fashion and style, don’t, or fall somewhere in the middle, you can’t ignore the fact that each choice is deeply personal and an expression of how one feels about themselves, and society.

My relationship to style has been somewhat tumultuous. I have always loved fashion and have always had a very distinctive look, even as a little kid. I very seriously dressed up as a lion, a pharaoh, and wore pink frilly dresses like I was in Alice in Wonderland. Even when I went through my tomboy phase, my accessories always had to match. By the time I was in High School, during the early 2010s, I was wearing heels 4 days a week (flats on Fridays only). To be honest, I enjoyed every phase of my style evolution…except for my athleisure days during undergrad, but I have graciously forgiven myself for that.

So what does my inner child have to do with how I dress?

Well, when I was a little girl, in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was the height of the music video era. There were major channels on television such as BET, MTV, FUSE etc. that played music videos throughout many hours of the day. It’s even a joke amongst millennials of being woken up to the sound of a specific music video playing in the background. My favorite genres were R&B and Hip Hop/Rap. The cornerstone (at least in my opinion) of the music video for these genres was the video vixen. The video vixen or vixens, were either one main woman, or a group of women that were either backup dancers, the love interest, or just otherwise eye candy in the video. And oh my goddess did I want to be one when I grew up. I thought they were so beautiful and feminine, and above all else, was obsessed with how they dressed. I was in general enthralled with the Y2K fashion at the time but of course because I was a child, couldn’t take part in the somewhat scantily clad, micro mini skirted, sequin crop topped looks of the time. But now that I am an adult, and Y2K fashion is currently in style, I can indulge my younger self.

I remember thinking as a little girl, when I grew up I wanted to be really, really hot.

Admittedly, that desire came from a deep insecurity that I was not pretty enough. I am so happy that in 2023, there is a lot of beauty promotion and beauty representation for black girls and women, specifically dark skinned women. When I was a girl there was only really that for white girls and some other non-black minorities, to an extent. We can wax poetic about why that is but this article isn’t really about that. Despite being told by my family the opposite, I never really felt like I was beautiful and to me the video vixens in Rap and R&B videos represented how I wanted to be viewed in society, which was desirable.

I’m writing this as an adult who can now understand and articulate those feelings. My dreams as a little girl are now a reality and now at twenty-seven I have come to terms with how I look, and yes, I'm really, really hot. Missy Elliot bars. To me my Y2K video girl style of dress is not only a celebration of how far I’ve come in my self love journey but also a celebration of my body. They say if you got it, flaunt it, and I intend to do just that because I flex not only for myself, as I am in the present. But I’m also flexing for who I was as a girl. I think of eight year old me often and I think if she saw me in the supermarket that she would absolutely love how I looked.

And I guess that’s the point of getting older.

While you can never go back and change who you were in the past, what made you insecure, you never have to lose who you are at your core. You have the right to indulge your inner child. So collect all the weird toys you wanted as a kid, dress in a princess fairy costume, wear things that spark joy. Don’t spend your life wearing things that you don’t like because other people might not like it, or get it. We’re all going to die anyway, don’t let your casket outfit be your best look.