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Pink pig tails and a ponytail dress

outlier

By Andrea SturmPublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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A pink dress and pigtails, not she.

Is she a feminist? She wondered. Biased? Or merely jaded? She wondered why her interactions with the masculine have been, historically, combative, argumentative, a fight on subjects such as principles, morals and boundaries. It seemed so random, she thought, she wondered if the others in her tribe were approached with similarity. She wondered how they might respond and if it brought them satisfaction, resolution and shared enlightenment or were the interactions an extension of a deeper darker undertow?

It is true that her character stems back to decades of a rejection of the mold that they had designed for her. A pink dress and pigtails, not she. She recalled her days of jumping roofs across the tops of garages with a group of boys in the seventies, until her physical attribute began to evolve into that of a young woman. Then she discovered, she was treated, differently, she had become an object to admire, conquer and possess, she rejected the narrative, she designed her own, she swam against the tide, upstream and none was an easy journey, but she designed the route and followed her own life map.

She recalls the time she was ten years old. She was at her mother’s friend’s house. It was a loving boarding house on Byron just East of Lincoln Avenue. Zoning laws have since ceased a homeowner’s opportunity to earn income or simply cover cost by operating the old-fashioned boarding house. She only rented to men. They were often isolated in their quarters.

She walked to the hot dog spot just two blocks south on Lincoln Avenue. She ordered, in Chicago in 1970’s, a hot dog with catchup, ketchup, whatever…only. This, if you are a Chicago resident, is unheard of and frowned upon by many, and in the 1970’s most. She returned to the boarding house only to find that the man behind the counter decided to place every condiment upon her hot dog to include celery salt, she despised celery salt, the smell is enough to end any appetite, she thought.

She returned the dog and requested the correct hotdog order to be assembled. He even attempted to scrape it from the dog and serve it back to her. She would not hear of it. She found herself in a full-blown argument with an adult man demanding her hotdog order to be assembled with catchup, ketchup, ONLY!

A fresh hotdog with ketchup, catchup only and an ability to speak. Her voice against injustice began here. We all have a right to make unique choices that impact our lives and it is not another person’s choice to decide how one should present to this world.

She pondered the matter and decided that it has always been her fight against complacency and conformity. After all, how does it have an impact on any other person except for that person whose voice is stifled, shunned, rejected, it is the invalidation of any other unique character, personality and individual expression.

As a creative, she has felt extreme empathy for any individual who have been oppressed, and challenged for a mere character difference, a difference in style, or personal life choices. She has discovered that it is her demonstration of individuality that has invited commentary by those who would assume to judge her. She never disclosed that she had overcome the judgements of others a long time ago. A time when her stepfather first touched her inappropriately until she found her voice and he promptly committed her to Catholic education. She never disclosed their judgements merely served as words to be served in the cold black and white letters that adorn a page. She thanks them for their continued distain.

At the school she recalls it was sometime in the early eighties and the weekend midnight cult movie was the new rage in a time when Punk Rock was emerging. Fishnet stockings covered her legs and she wore a schoolgirl uniform that match the color of strands of her hair. Rejecting the bra as an object of constriction, she wore her uniform proudly.

Self-identification was difficult because it was years of verbal abuse she had sustained as a young child, an American, who had simply learned a foreign language first due to her years in the foundational structure of formal education in Kindergarten, in Germany, of course. Verbal abuse in the early seventies that labeled her a Nazi. She did not even know what that meant. She been born in Chicago, a city that had a historic history as a gangster town, not much has changed, it remains the same and the reputation is earned in blood on the city streets, not much has changed. The only difference these decades later, she thought, is the costume that the guys and gals wear, those represent an affiliation and are often associated with colors. For example, the blue uniforms of those officers that defend or attack our citizens and streets, not all uniforms truly represent an affiliation, merely an association as proven and demonstrated in todays climate of uncertainty, not much has changed, it simply got worse.

In the development of an identity, she explored many genres. She tried them on for a fit. None were as comfortable as the identity that she adopted in her act of self-expression. They called her an artist. She adopted the idea. She lived like a starving artist, starving for a little while but then came this unexpected recognition. It made her uncomfortable. There was too much attention and too many demands. She had become a puppet of the master, soon she retired. Fading into the darkness of the heavy metal genre. She identified with music. It expressed her angst. It expressed her empathy. It expressed her observations, from the voice and rhythm of another person’s perspective, it became a validation of an era, and the era was loud.

All methods of self-expression. From the days of posting hand screened posters onto any open space to the written words in booklets. From the splatter on the walls of her studio to the splatter on the clothes of supporters who bought her merchandise. She retired. Retreated. She noted the changing decades. She was observant in the wave. It was allowable and exposed a generation of radical thinkers whose children designed the matrix, the internet, the world wide web. She considered the acts of subtle revolution that took hold of generations in the undertow of the music scene.

Don’t stop the music! Reject the complacent conformity and splash the colors onto the walls that have been erected to contain creativity, and the unique outlier in the settings of polite society.

Subsequently, and wholly in error, she did amend, acclimate, moderate to be tolerated and accepted, it was a fail. Those times She recalls were the same times that her soul was mortally wounded, raped, beaten, lied to, stolen from and slandered. Learning to say no. Adopting the rejection of conformity. She is the creative outlier that her soul has demanded her to be for her lifetime and she expresses her observations in black and white.

Rejecting conformity, A pink dress and pigtails, not she.

happiness
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