Wardrobe War

Hello there! It's been some time (though not a devastatingly long time) since I last updated this space. I've been rather busy with school and church activities, but I've finally started university and my life is pretty much back to normal.

At the risk of sounding superficial, I will declare that one of the things I hate most about university life is having to choose your outfit every single school day. In Singapore, we wear school uniforms all the way until Junior College, so for most of us, university is the first time we will ever have to wear our own clothes to school.

Most girls my age love the fact that they get to choose their own clothes, because they like to dress up, and 12 years of school uniforms have always restricted the expression of their beauty to the fullest.

For me, I have always loved school uniforms, because they eliminate the tendency to compare. Many people criticize the school uniform and argue that it restricts students' creativity and causes students to become robots. But, in my opinion, if we had the freedom to choose our own clothes (and I am realising this more and more now that I am in university), we would spend a great amount of time and energy choosing and worrying and comparing. Such behavior is needless, but inevitable. At least for me - if I had to choose what to wear every day, I would worry endlessly about what others thought of my outfit and it would be way more difficult to concentrate in class. As it is, most of us are too tired out from hectic school life to pay full attention in class anyway.


Now, I am truly feeling the pressure of having to choose a new outfit every day. I open my clothes cupboard and feel like I have nothing to wear. And the problem with being fat is this - nothing I try on looks nice on me. I try on an outfit, decide that it makes me look fat, and toss it onto my bed. Then I try another one, and it is still unsatisfying, so I toss it onto my chair. I toss outfits onto my table, the floors, the shelves... until my entire room becomes a mess of clothes and I am still undecided on what outfit to wear. I stand in front of my mirror and tilt my body at awkward angles to make myself look skinner, and if looking slimmer is impossible in the current outfit, I will throw it out and choose another one.

I know, I know, I shouldn't be vain. I should just wear what's comfortable and appropriate for school, instead of worrying excessively about my appearance. But the fact is, people judge you for what you wear, and while I would love to have many happy friends who completely love me because of my personality and don't care about my choice of clothes, that's probably not going to happen. And my life would just be so much easier if I looked nice. Then I wouldn't feel so damn self-conscious every time I step off the bus into the school.

Ideally, I would wear a baggy t-shirt, jeans and flip flops to school, and not give a damn about all the pretty girls who wear beautiful sleeveless blouses that accentuate their fatless upper arms and tiny shorts that barely cover their bottoms. But I do care, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't.

I always feel unjustifiably annoyed when I see girls wearing nice dresses to school. What's up with that!! Why do you need to make yourself look so pretty in that uncomfortable-looking dress, which you need to press down because it flies up every time the shuttle bus drives past you? Is that really a sensible outfit for school?

I say that my annoyance is unjustified because there's truly nothing wrong with wearing nice things to school, and you can't quite draw the line between what is sensible and what is not.

Maybe I'm just jealous.

Oh well. I hope and pray that I will stop caring excessively about what I wear, and will just accept the first outfit I choose. Too much time has been wasted on trying to find clothes that make me look slimmer, because even if the clothes make me look slimmer than usual, I will still look fat overall. Fighting and negotiating with my wardrobe is truly an exercise in futility. Being skinny is so much easier. You look nice in just about anything.