The Things They Wear
Lily Smith’s closet overflows with sweatshirts. If counted, she has precisely 46 in every shade, pattern, color, and texture you can imagine. She hangs them in a tight rainbow and wears them like bright armor. They were scavenged from all corners of thrift stores across the Pacific Northwest: little jewels in an ocean of rocks. When the sun finally shines and it is too hot to be wearing a sweatshirt, she transitions into her graphic t-shirts and flowing dresses. She wears blue and purple tie-dye adorned with wild bears and wolves. They seem to prance and snarl and howl among their bright lightning struck background. Her dresses flow with bright flowers and plants and animals. When she twirls, she is a tornado of color swirling through the warm air tearing up the grass. Her long golden hair of soft curls bounces and ripples like drops of sun.
As for pants, Lily wears jeans, but mainly jeans with ripped knees that are two inches too short as she towers over other girls at an impressive 5’11”. She carries her size with love. She wears the title Mamma Bear as her hugs are not only blanket soft and as warm as hot cocoa, but reassuring. She is cuddly and bright like her sweatshirts. She wears worn shredded white Vans that go everywhere with her. Her Vans wear faint markings of drawings done by friends late at night that couldn’t be washed out.
To match her bubbly personality and bright clothes, she wears a smile. She wears a smile to attract everyone like magnets to be her friend. She wears a smile to hide the fear of having no one. She wears a smile to seem like the sweatshirts she owns too many of: warm and protective. She wears a smile.
Lily has two best friends: Helena and Olivia. They are both of average height with dark hair and eyes. While some may think it, they insist they don’t look alike. If anything, they don’t dress alike. For one thing, Helena is notorious for ignoring the weather. Rain or shine, Helena wears tank tops. Red tank tops, grey tank tops, sparkly tank tops, embroidered tank tops. Anything to show off her tiny waist. Most days, she wears one of her infamous tank tops, jeans cinched at her waist with a belt she’s had since she was 10, gold necklaces, unevenly applied drugstore foundation, gold eyeshadow, and any pair of white sneakers. If the rain is really harsh, she will throw on a cardigan. She wears tight fitting clothes because she can; she was blessed with a body fitting within the lines of the American Beauty coloring book. Helena is like her namesake: queen of Troy. She keeps boys like cards, always ready to play them. Beautiful and ambitious like a queen, yet somehow sweet and caring like chocolate chip cookies, she wears no lies, only transparency.
Olivia is not a queen; you must color outside the lines to depict her. Her hair is not raven dark like Helena’s, but a soft brown and wavy like the trunk of a tree. She wears blouses and jeans like a uniform. Yet shopping for jeans is always a monstrous task. Nothing fits right. If it hugs her large, muscular thighs correctly, there are inches of space at her waist. She cannot fit into the cookie cutter jean industry. She wears the few jeans she can slip into. To hide her ill-fitting pants, she wears bright well-made blouses. On Monday, she wears soft red as bright as cranberries. On Tuesday, she wears blue flowers with green stems. On Wednesday, she wears off the shoulder teal with frilled edges. On Thursday, she wears simple black long sleeve. And on Friday, she wears stars on a sky of pink. Her world presented on the shirts of a week. She wears beautiful clothes because she wants to be seen as beautiful.
Yet despite the bright, whimsical patterns and colors of her shirts and blouses, she wears a slight frown. She wears a slight frown because that is her resting face. She wears a slight frown because she is tired of people saying and doing dumb things. She frowns because she is done with an unrealistic ideal foisted upon her, judging her.
But these wild girls also wear invisible things. They wear the weight of being a teenage girl in a society with a single beauty standard. They wear the knowledge that they will be less valued in society because of their gender. They wear the fact that the clothes matter more than the invisible things they wear, even when they wear those the most.
The clothes they wear are only a glimpse of the macrocosm of their wardrobes, of them. They wear who they want to be. Strong and smart, yet beautiful and kind. Fierce warriors going off to battle adorned in their armor accompanied by wolves and bears and stars on a pink sky. Yet, when they are together, what they wear doesn’t matter. They wear their bodies, their character, their actions, their laughter, their joy, their friendship. They wear the quilt of their love bundled up and bright against the harsh winter of American beauty.