How Wearing a Uniform Impacted The Way I Dress

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For most of my academic career prior to starting college, I had to wear a uniform for school. Not only did I have to wear a uniform, there was also a long list of boundaries that dictated the rest of our dress code, from our hair, to our nails, to what kind of accessories or jewelry we could wear. Now, I don’t consider myself anti-uniform, since I can see the benefits of wearing one so children aren’t taught to try and keep up with the Joneses at a young age with what they wear to school, but I’m certainly not pro-uniform, at least in the way my schools had approached them.

For me, their approach, as dramatic and angsty teenager as this may sound, aimed to strip away all individuality from its students and forced them to conform to a set ideal. Even though there were choices of a white shirt or a blue shirt, or pants or a skirt, you were still strictly relegated to a certain norm. Jewelry could not be any colors that were deemed “too distracting", whatever that was supposed to mean, hair could only be styled a certain way that was “natural” and also “not crazy”, once again, whatever that was supposed to mean, and nails from middle school below could not be painted of course, since that would be “too distracting”; the students eventually got to paint our nails but only if it was a plain French manicure, since that was not distracting or too creative, I guess.

I was a bit of a rebel, though in a quiet way. Of course I would wear nail polish, but only light sheer pinks and nudes so I wouldn’t get caught, but I’d know that I was breaking the rules that I found to be, quite frankly, ridiculous. I would see how “crazy” I could get away with doing my hair for school, especially when I was going through a Star Wars phase and did my hair like Padmé or Princess Leia every day, but once again, this was more of an act of quiet rebellion. I saw it as I had beat the system- I didn’t get caught and I had the satisfaction of bending the rules the way I wanted.

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So, as you can imagine, I had big plans of going ham when I finally didn’t have to wear a uniform for school anymore and could dress however I wanted. In high school, when I could finally wear nail polish, I always had my nails long, with bold colors and designs and different shapes, since I refused to be put back into that box of conformity again. When I got to college, I imagined myself wearing whatever I wanted, and I would feel great, and everyone else would be doing the same and it would just be some sort of nonconformist fashion utopia.

This was not really the case for me, however. I had gotten so used to just wearing what everyone else was wearing, never thinking about what I wanted to wear, and the looks you would get from everyone when you broke the dress code, that I found myself in a bit of a situation. I wore only muted colors, or neutrals, or black and gray, not wanting to draw too much attention to myself, and I tried to follow what other people were wearing - I would wear another kind of uniform , just self-imposed this time. I found myself torn between things I wanted to wear. One one hand, I saw cute dresses and matching skirt sets and bold coats, and on the other, I was looking at what I was already wearing, a plain sweater with jeans and sneakers and a plain jacket. That is not to say I didn’t like what I was wearing - anyone who knows me knows I still love wearing black and neutral colors - but it wasn’t really what I was dying to wear or I suppose the outfits I fantasized about wearing.

It wasn’t until recently that I started to fully settle into what I really wanted to wear; this is thanks to the people I’ve met who wear what they want and don’t care if they stand out, or if they aren’t wearing what the trends are. And you know what? Other people didn’t really care either; the looks these people would get weren’t those of “oh look at them, they broke the dress code”, but that of “wow those sparkly boots are super cool”. I still have days where I slip back into the comfort of what’s trendy and what everyone else is wearing, since I’m only human, but I’m no longer as afraid to branch out and wear those dresses that were just hanging in my closet, unworn. Who knows, maybe I’ll even bring back the Star Wars hair one day.

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