When I was in junior high, I once sat in the cafeteria and looked across the room. A girl from the “popular” table was staring at me. Then suddenly the whole table looked at me at once and started laughing.
When you’re going through school, you inevitably meet bullies. But bullying changes as you get to higher grades. As it is common for bullying among boys to result in physical altercations, it’s common for girls catty and malicious verbal abuse.
When you’re young, bullying is often about kids not sharing or making comments that they’re probably too young to understand. When you’re in higher grades, bullying more often than not involves physical appearance—your body every bit as much as the clothes you wear on it.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I decided to start my own blog, Don’t Be Common Fashion. The idea was to make a blog for people that were designated as “different” and criticized for it.
The worst part about it all was that even teachers seemed to favor the cookie-cutter kids that were from the “good” part of town and wore Lilly Pulitzer and Vineyard Vines.
Since I was a little kid, I’ve always been tiny. And even though I’ve remained the same size since I stopped growing, I still get comments that I’m too skinny or I’m getting too fat and I should stop eating potato chips.
I started my blog my blog because I was annoyed. I was annoyed with society and the people I interacted with throughout the day. Being called a twig isn’t exactly a compliment. I never thought it would turn into something, something that I continue work on for hours every day.
When I first started Don’t Be Common Fashion, I helped people with fashion advice, and I built the blog on the condition one condition: fashion without judgement. I wanted to create a safe place where people could share their love of fashion without worry of criticism.
I didn’t want them to have to worry about someone saying, “You can’t pull that off.” My goal was to help people feel confident, because when society’s idea of beauty is constantly bringing you down, feeling confident can be hard to do.
What I never expected was that my blog would help me with my own body issues. Since I started school, I never felt good about the way I looked. I remember being teased on the playground about how my nose is weird because its pointed up.
After elementary school, the number of photos I was in became lower and lower until the point that I would refuse to be in photos at all.
Creating my blog gave me power to control taking photos, and it was then that I realized how great it was that my nose was pointed up and how my body naturally looked. Don’t Be Common Fashion helped me appreciate the fact that I didn’t look or dress like everyone else, and that I should be proud of that.
The biggest part of overcoming any body issue is having confidence in yourself, which is easier said than done. It took me almost 20 years to feel comfortable in my own skin, and what helped me most was realizing that everyone is different and you should embrace what makes you different.