As I was growing up, I always related to the outcasts. I was a young child at the very end of the hippie movement. I envied their freedom, and ability to live there lives without caring about what people though. When I saw David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, I was in love.
In 1983, my freshman year of high school, I had a hard-core punk-rocker in my biology class. I can't imagine what he saw in me, with my tortoise shell glasses, bad haircut, and hand me down clothes, but he began to indoctrinate into the world of punk music and rebellion. I felt like I found my place in the world. I had already been wearing hand-me-downs for years, as my adoptive mother felt that school clothes were an unnecessary expenditure, so it was a small leap to go from ugly accidentally to ugly on purpose. I got contacts and cut my hair into a mohawk. Being rejected by society somehow made me feel accepted. I had a spine of steel when it came to being myself, and expressing my self creatively. I eschewed social status at school, never went to a single school dance, and sneered at cheerleaders.
Fast-forward, 25 years. I have a 14 year old daughter. She is tall, slender and beautiful. She is also a cheerleader. My years of muttering about how anti-woman it is to stand on the sideline, cheering for the boys, have fallen on deaf ears. She has also been nominated for freshman homecoming princess. Not in a "Carrie-let's dump-pig-blood-on-her" way, but, a "she's-sweet-and-pretty" way.
How did this happen?
And why am I so proud of her?
In 1983, my freshman year of high school, I had a hard-core punk-rocker in my biology class. I can't imagine what he saw in me, with my tortoise shell glasses, bad haircut, and hand me down clothes, but he began to indoctrinate into the world of punk music and rebellion. I felt like I found my place in the world. I had already been wearing hand-me-downs for years, as my adoptive mother felt that school clothes were an unnecessary expenditure, so it was a small leap to go from ugly accidentally to ugly on purpose. I got contacts and cut my hair into a mohawk. Being rejected by society somehow made me feel accepted. I had a spine of steel when it came to being myself, and expressing my self creatively. I eschewed social status at school, never went to a single school dance, and sneered at cheerleaders.
Fast-forward, 25 years. I have a 14 year old daughter. She is tall, slender and beautiful. She is also a cheerleader. My years of muttering about how anti-woman it is to stand on the sideline, cheering for the boys, have fallen on deaf ears. She has also been nominated for freshman homecoming princess. Not in a "Carrie-let's dump-pig-blood-on-her" way, but, a "she's-sweet-and-pretty" way.
How did this happen?
And why am I so proud of her?
2 comments:
Love you. Love her. xoxoxoxo
Because as much as you are your own person, so is she. You have taught her to be herself - that is something to be very proud of.
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