Limits of hip.

I was too alternative to go to Prom but I'm not alternative enough to grow my armpit hair.Interesting.

 

  Maybe I shouldn't have stopped at the green hair dye and the nose ring and the angsty, pretentious art (see above). Maybe if I hadn't been so timid and desperate for approval I could've gone the whole hog and not skipped past the riot grrrl phase so quickly, or spent  time reading more the sort of filth presented below.

I thoroughly enjoyed these books in my pervy, morbid curiosity phase. What was inspired by reading lots of Irvine Welsh soon spread further afield to some German feminist literature about infected arseholes that was beautifully parodied by South Park in 'The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs'. If you have a prissy boyfriend, I highly recommend.

I remember when me and Clio shunned year 11 prom to watch a crappy copy of Pysch-Out on vhs and eat Chinese food with the boys. I felt too paralysed with fear at the thought of joining the other girls in my year with their toilet-roll-cover dresses and fake tan smell.

I remember lusting over the most amazing girl over Myspace when I was fifteen. She had bright, bubblegum blue hair and massive tits and wore the most hideous, lurid dresses that never sell in vintage shops, with a necklace of dolls heads and crayoned-on Barry M make up. There was this phenomenal picture of her on all fours, roaring up from the pavement like a blue maned lion, with a humongous pile of sick in front of her, her half lidded eyes and spittled pink lips swollen with pride. Perhaps instead of accepting that I had the potential to be perfectly normal after years of doubt, I could be a fully fledged feminist internet icon. Or maybe I'm just suffering from juvenile tumblr envy. I'll get back to my dusty academic subject of choice and my Nick Drake appreciation and muted wardrobe colour scheme. Being on the cusp of final teenagehood and emotional stability can seem kinda boring sometimes.

I guess being alternative is all relative. After being un-intentionally different, lauded and mocked through school, the stigma attached in university to wanting to, or seeming to want to be different is seen as disgustingly hip. Through layers of ironic self detachment every valid cause can stink of a crowd mentality. Not fitting in is fitting in.

Having rocks thrown at you when you were ten years old for wearing tie-dye and flares on non uniform day, only three other people standing near to you for wearing black lipstick at the school disco when you were twelve, nearly being glassed for having pink hair and purple docs at thirteen, having people bitch and whisper in the common room when you walked past with a Butthole Surfers t-shirt and a PVC skirt at sixteen, the constant taunts of skinny, stinking, hippy, freak. And it went deeper than the clothes. People genuinely believed in High School that I was horribly, undeniably, strange and creepy. Rumours that I was a slutty, lesbian, drug addict frequently circulated during my high school career. To this day although they're utter lies, I am sort of morbidly proud of this, despite being reduced to tears at the time.

  Completely lame and self-indulgent, but these memories help me remember that I'm not getting washed away into the sea of hipsters intentionally. I miss being part of the 'weirdos' that collected under the surface when we all lived in this town, when I felt like our own sub-culture could exist without the scorn of being deemed 'hip'. Back when we didn't have to be so self-aware of our own cultural identities, and could like something for the joy of it being different to what we were involuntarily subjected to. After multiple talks over the months on this subject with friends, I have decided that maybe I'm holding back for the sake of being more socially acceptable. Despite in all probability being perhaps disappointingly normal, I still withold pointless, yet vital information at times. Like my fascinations with John Waters/teen problem pages/tits for example. This is why I have decided from now on to hold back less on what I'll write about. And learn to love that painful but proud feeling of heart-aching, stomach-churning, cringe that comes with every grateful blog view.

I kept thinking about this all last night, and when the birds had started chirping I thought back to an article I'd read in the Metro that day. Apparently whales all sing varitations of the same song in mating season, until a few of them break out their own unique tune and gradually everyone copies them, as some are born to be different, and others spend their whole lives trying to conform. I wonder if those whales had armpit hair, whether they would be the armpit-shaving kind...