Both to ace the test and to publicly step into my role as a smart girl. Handing out the test, our teacher once again launched into a lecture about not underestimating the difficulty of his class. Get over it! I answered back in my own mind. Just give me the test; I’ve totally got this! He glanced down, just as I rolled my eyes in emphasis to my thoughts.
His explosion was cataclysmic. There I sat, tears welling up behind my lavender smart-girl glasses with the swooping arms, all eyes trained on me, as he carried on about my wanton disrespect. He slapped the test down on my desk and announced that he would grade my quiz aloud, in front of the entire class.
Quivering, I pushed through the test. Thank God I knew all the answers! My intelligence would shine through, I would be seen and accepted as the “smart girl,” and everything would be all right.
Whisking my paper off the desk, he graded aloud: “Class, let’s see what Miss Plank thinks Fe stands for.” And then shaking his head sorrowfully and rolling his eyes in mock disappointment, he’d look at my answer, one element at a time, and ask, “Class? What does Fe really stand for?” as if all my answers, which were correct, were wrong!
What had just happened? Showing my intelligence had gotten me nowhere and had actually embarrassed me further. Burning with emotion, I saw that there were other, hidden factors at play. And although I didn’t understand those factors, I knew that if I wanted to succeed, I was going to have to cover my body, my brains, and my beliefs.
The Flirt in the Pom-Pom Skirt
By the time high school rolled around, MTV had taken the world by storm. On the days I was not wearing my pom-pom uniform, I wore cut-up sweatshirts, short skirts, fishnets, anklets, and high heels, just like the girls in the ZZ Top videos. As you can probably guess, revealing myself got me seen! But not in the way I anticipated.
To me, a lifelong dancer who was used to costumes and showing my body in leotards and tights, short skirts and revealing clothing meant nothing. I thought dressing in a way that was authentic to my dancer personality would show people who I really was: a dancer who loved school and was tired of corseting herself into perfect-princess-hood or hiding behind her smart-girl glasses and was ready to reveal herself authentically so she could be seen and accepted for all that she was. Apparently I was wrong.
The attention I received from wearing short skirts and heels to school, while intoxicating in some regards, was confusing. How could a simple skirt create such a stir, and why weren’t the boys — in their tight corduroy Ocean Pacific shorts, which were much shorter than my skirts, and fitted tank tops — ogled in the same way I was? Seriously, what was the big deal about my clothing, and why did my level of undress matter more than who I was inside, what kind of person I was, or what I achieved academically? How was it that I could spend my whole life being a compliant, good little girl and barely get noticed, but show my body and — bam! — everybody noticed in a way that overshadowed everything else I had accomplished?
I didn’t understand why I was called a slut for exposing too much of my body, when I wasn’t doing anything that actually was slutty. And paradoxically, why I was called a prude and teased for being a “goody-goody” and looking like a librarian when I covered my body and hung out in the library. No matter which side of my personality I revealed, I couldn’t win!
The turning point happened one spring day in choir when I bent down to grab my music folder from the bottom shelf of the music rack at the front of the room. The choir director, frustrated by the lively and unfocused mood of the class, seized the moment and claimed that the chaotic mood of the class was my fault, that I had distracted the boys with my outfit.
While my initial reaction was confusion and embarrassment at getting in trouble, the whistling and catcalls of my friends soon had me doubled over with laughter and filled with an unquenchable sense of power and glee. For the next fifty minutes, student after student dropped their pencil or accidentally spilled their music folder, asking me loudly if I could please pick it up for them. I rose stunningly to the occasion with as much exaggerated bending over and hair flipping as I could muster.
Being teenagers, we inferred that if bending over in a miniskirt and heels garnered that much of a reaction, the response provoked by a bathing suit would be epic! The next day I came to school in a bikini covered by a long, belted jacket. In the middle of class, one of the boys announced loudly, “Wow! It’s getting hot in here!” at which point I stood up, said, “It sure is!” and took off my jacket.
My subsequent visit to the principal’s office taught me that my body, and the way I revealed it, held an enormous amount of power. It also taught me that being smart and being sexy were mutually exclusive concepts, that women who tried to embody both would be judged harshly, and that any previous accomplishments would be immediately dismissed. I learned that most people didn’t care what I did or did not do in actuality; they saw only my outfits, and not the person inside those outfits. It made no sense why I couldn’t be both a good girl and a flirt who loved to show off.
Irritated by the narrow range of acceptable behavior for a smart, good girl and by the burgeoning rumors about my lack of virtue, I decided to rebel. I was tired of covering my intellect, my dorky passions, and my love of dance-inspired clothing. I had lived much of my life according to other people’s standards, constantly seeking praise, and I was done trying to figure it all out and covering certain pieces of my identity.
My mission became to reveal it all! Well, not exactly to reveal my authentic self, because that would mean risking real rejection — I couldn’t take that — but to reveal a bold, sexy, funny, in-your-face version of myself who could never be stung by rejection or rumors or by being misunderstood again. I disconnected from my body and covered the pain of not being seen or accepted for who I was with the wildest, sexiest outfits possible, doing and saying what others only dared to think. Inside I was still a good girl in glasses who wanted to please and be praised. Nothing had changed at all except my clothing, yet changing my clothing changed everything about the way I was perceived. And despite my cavalier, “nobody can hurt me” attitude, the gossip hurt deeply.
My body was not my heart, my soul, or my thoughts. How I showed or covered it had nothing to do with who I was, and I strove to be immune from comments about my virtue or lack of self-worth because of the way I showed off my body. I saw how the roles I played, the costumes I wore, and the labels others assigned to me became more real than who I actually was. If my coverings mattered more than who I was or what I accomplished, then why bother trying?
Embracing the Neutrals
Frustrated by not being seen for who I was inside or for all that I had rightfully accomplished, and confused by the backlash from revealing my body — and tired of working so hard, only to be overshadowed by rumors and falsehoods — I hoped that college could give me a fresh start. I wanted to meet new people who could finally see the real me. Not my corset of perfection from elementary school, not my smart-girl glasses or my denim miniskirt and heels, but me, and everything I was inside.
The only way I could think of to accomplish this was to let go of every costume, mask, role, or identity I had ever embodied. I strove to become neutral, transparent, flat, and free of any type of covering or enhancement that could cause people to judge me in any way. I quit dancing, gained the “freshman fifteen,” and began rolling out of bed and heading to class exactly as I was. I cut off my permed and frosted hair and tossed my makeup, and instead of being enthusiastic and perky, which were my normal, natural traits, I intentionally cultivated a personality that was free of personality.
Which did not allow me to be seen authentically any more than wearing a bikini to choir had. Instead, it caused me to disconnect so completely from everything that had ever brought me joy that I lost all sense of who I was or what I liked. My quest for transparency led me straight into nothingness. Without any cover, who was I, and what could I possibly be worth?
Learning to Accessorize
Unsure of who I was or what I wanted, I quit school and moved home. As summer was drawing to a close and I still had zero idea who I was supposed to be, a friend called me in a panic. One of