We long to be both individual and included
When I entered public high school at the age of 16 following a half-decade of home-schooling, what I saw there blew my mind. The year was 1998, and the student body of Raleigh’s Needham Broughton High School encompassed everyone from rich snobs to poor kids from rental housing. What struck me, though, were the very many styles of dress: goth, streetwear, southern-inflected “prep”. At the time, my sartorial choices were guided purely by convenience: I dressed exclusively in loose sweatpants and T-shirts. Much like the home-schooled heroine of 2004’s Mean Girls, I became fascinated by the material markers of my high school’s various cliques. Unlike Cady Heron, though, I wasn’t seeking to master them.
