Author Sylvia Plath once said, “Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?”
I was thinking about this quote and about my personal experience with fashion. Like most young girls interested in fashion in the early 2000s, I wore bedazzled, bright-colored scarves, Twinkle Toes and t-shirts showcasing the Eiffel tower. As I got older, I continued to experiment with my style, circling in and out of trends with my own added flare.
Looking back at the ensembles I used to present, I really had no idea what I was doing. I would never wear those outfits again, and I’m pretty sure the people who saw me wearing them didn’t think of me as a fashion icon.
However, when I got ready in the morning for picture day in sixth grade, I knew not everyone would like my outfit. I knew I might remember it years later with a wince of underlying pity, and I knew my style would be different in one year or five.
Despite knowing those things to be true, I would wear whatever made me happy or excited to get up in the morning. I loved the idea of going above and beyond my classmates with my artistic attire, despite some frowned upon theatrics.
The thing about fashion, I say when my little sister or older brother asks me for advice, is you have to be brave. If you are truly committed to discovering and developing your own unique style, you must accept the fact it won’t happen overnight. You must accept people might not like it, and you might not like it either. When you love something enough, the process of growth is as enjoyable as the pride in accomplishment.
Now, you have the option to fall into the crowd and wear exactly what your friends and family deem a safe, satisfactory choice. In this route, you can still have fun and maybe feel safer knowing you can’t be picked out of the masses. However, if you want to be good at something, and grow into it as it grows into you, you must experiment, and experiments are meant to fail.
My muse, Plath, wants to try on lives like dresses. We stand in front of a mirror before a party, rearranging tops and bottoms and digging through innocent drawers to find the “perfect” look. The finished product of colors and textures is like a costume or secret identity. You can be whoever you want, and the experimentation without demobilizing fear of failure allows you to explore a new part of yourself, a new realm of untouched identity, just for the night.
If a life was a dress, a costume, a new aesthetic, we could simply throw it on for the night and see who we become by morning. While this is simple in theory, reality isn’t so kind. We have societal expectations to be successful by 25 and a master by 30. There’s no time to waste trying everything when you must be the best at one thing in order to survive or leave your mark on any single industry.
The fear of failure overpowers any sense of creativity or experimentation to find one’s self or sense of style in a way of living. It’s the small acts of individuality that are the easiest to explore bravely each day, but it is the largest and scariest that are the most important.
To ask someone to discover who they are by trying many things sounds like a realistic adventure that can and will happen. It will result in a final draft of their fully, artistically developed being. We ask people to do this, to explore, but we tell them to be realistic. We tell them to pick one thing while they’re still young so that in 30 years they will be happy and rich. Imagine all of the lives you could try on in five years or 30. Imagine who you could become in that time and what you could learn about yourself. A life is not a dress, but it is an act of expression and style, and should be treated as such.
Libby Evans is a junior studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Libby know by emailing her at le422021@ohio.edu.
