"Some girls, they have natural ease, they wear it any way they please"

Sometimes I wonder if this grownup look is a facade or a shell.  Am I really?  Do I want to just assimilate into the professional woman's uniform of heels, skirt, jacket, and layered hair?  After all these years of trying to make myself look different and unique, do I really want to just blend in?

I don't think it's much of a shell.  I'm still retaining pieces of my past (tattoos, daith ear piercing) while adding fun touches like shimmery silver nails, chunky unique jewelry, limbo bimbo hot pink toes, retro flair to my pencil skirts, dresses, tights, and flowy black clothes.  Why does this mean so much to me?  Well, I love color and fun.  I may not be able to wear purple tights to work anymore, but I can still wear my red mary jane kitten heels.  It's all about compromise.  If I'm not choosing to live an alternative lifestyle, then I have to follow dress code.  It doesn't mean I can't have fun with it.

However, my weight is preventing me from having a lot of fun with casual clothes these days.  I really wish Torrid was in more nearby locations rather than being forced into Lane Bryant prices or the emerging Kohls glitter muumuus (though their dress pants are still great).  And Old Navy, do me a favor and just increase the quality of fabric a scoch for the prices you're charging.  Please and thank you. 

I want to be flattering but fun, professional but not stuffy, unique but not reverting back to baggy and pierced.  I want to look my age while still having people think I'm no older than 28.  It's a hell of a fine tightrope to walk at this stage of life. 

It's like my favorite How I Met Your Mother ep, "Arrivederci, Fiero" when Marshall loses the last bit of his youth in his beat up junk car and they examine how every young up-and-comer has a secret piece of their youth that they desperately cling onto.  Since my tattoos aren't going anywhere and are only going to develop, I think my "cling" is that daith ear piercing I previously mentioned.  It's in a very hard part of the cartilage to pierce, is a simple lovely black captive hoop, and is the one thing I got done because a crush thought it would look cool.  L says it was my Daria and Trent moment.  So even though I've had a customer ask me if it was a hearing aid, it's not going anywhere.  I removed my brow, tongue, industrial, and gages...this is my little memory that I can have neatly tucked towards my ear canal.

I look back on where I'm from
Look at the woman I've become
And the strangest things seem
suddenly routine.
-Hedwig and the Angry Inch