Q

For four years in my childhood, i did not wear a skirt.

I flat out refused to wear one. It an epic, all-consuming revolt i had with the rest of my family – which is rare because i’m generally obedient. It wasn’t a gradual nor planned thing. It took only a moment of startlingly clear child-ish revelation and i made up my mind. I still remember it in it’s entirety.

I was out with my family, wearing a skirt, holding a teletubby doll i went EVERYWHERE with. At that point i was already in my precocious stage – in fact, at the peak of it.

(For the back story: https://dopaminedaze.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/strange-starts-young/ This was when i joined PAP Kindergarten and became a pseudo-dictator within my clique. Life was – after the academically, socially, and psychologically rigorous stint in Rosyth – dull. Naturally i spent my time conjuring up conjectures and theories, between mundane playtime and sticker-pasting.)

..and we walked past a boy wearing jeans and it hit me (and by hit, i mean it was so overwhelming it felt like i was physically shoved by the idea). Why do girls have to wear skirts to be girls? I was very sure i was a girl, and that i liked boys, and i liked girly stuff and all that shit. Do i have to wear a skirt like a costume to indicate my gender identity to the rest of the world? No.

It started out as simple as that. Clear as a sparkling clear lake; I just wanted to try not wearing a skirt. I wasn’t particular about what the end-point would be, i just wanted to not wear them.

So i told my parents, i’m not gonna wear skirts anymore. Just like that. Even for school, i’d wear shorts under my skirt. I can imagine how disturbing it was for them, their child just straight out going loco and refusing an article of clothing for no apparent reason. They tried, trust me – ALL my relatives tried – talking me out of it. Didn’t work. It only made me more indignant.

Why? I’m not refusing to clean my room or eat my vegetables (although that i didn’t do either lulz) nor am i indulging in disgusting nose-picking habits. All i wanted was the autonomy to not wear what i didn’t. It pissed me off really, REALLY badly that they took it so personally.

It got to me even more when they started worrying about my sexuality. I think what i was truly pissed at (although at that age i didn’t have the vocabulary to crystallize this thought) was that people couldn’t accept living without arbitrary labels.

The statement i was trying to make wasn’t a feminist one or anything. I was just trying to say: screw labels.

The more unnecessarily worked up they are about my sudden boycott of skirts, the more determined i was to never don them again. I wanted to show them that i could be a girl without having to wear skirts.

But it didn’t work that way. Adults ran our lives, after all, and their preconceived notions of my apparent tomboy-ness and potential sapphic tendencies took over. They assumed i’d want to wear my hair short and that i didn’t like playing with Barbies and that i didn’t like pink and wasn’t interested in boys.

It didn’t bother me much that i had to live out what they think me to be, I could even live with their constant jibes and references to how boy-ish i was. All i felt, really, was a resigned kind of sympathy that adults took everything so damn seriously and properly – as if there were guidelines (No skirt means not girl).

So this went on for about four years. Throughout Kindergarten until primary two, i had cropped hair and wore primarily jeans and overalls. No one bothered to buy me pretty girl toys or tried to inculcate feminine traits/skills in me. I basically ran around as a wild androgynous pixie child, home-making perfumes and staging mini-deaths on our sitting room floor. Because i had no gender convention to follow – no one could figure whether to treat me as a boy or a girl.

I think this little androgynous child period gave me the chance to transcend many kid-things, so i guess i’m a lot freer than most.

In primary three i got bored of having to live with everyone’s tomboy expectations of me and just wore what the damn hell i wanted (including skirts). The fuss and fanfare over my ‘newly-re-established femininity’ was painful, but i brought it upon myself four years ago, so… no complaints lol.

And then i grew up to love skank clothing, negating all subversive abilities i had in the past. Oh well!